Solution provides enhanced collaboration and productivity, smarter decision-making and improved data analysis.

DENVER, Sept. 23 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Helping one of the nation's leading energy companies meet the challenges of rapid growth while boosting worker productivity, workflow and collaboration, Microsoft Corp. today announced that Oklahoma City-based Chesapeake Energy Corp. has deployed an extensible and scalable enterprise solution based on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 across its entire enterprise. The new solution integrates the company's intranet, extranet and Internet presence and, through its extensibility, streamlines collaboration across project teams -- including teams with remote employees -- creating a foundation for business intelligence applications, stronger content management and consistent communications with external stakeholders.

(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20000822/MSFTLOGO)

Chesapeake is the largest producer of natural gas in the United States. It is also the most active driller, with a daily production volume of 2.3 billion cubic feet. Between 2005 and 2008, the company experienced rapid growth, adding up to 100 new employees per month. Keeping up with such growth requires IT flexibility, and the company's legacy intranet was proving to be cumbersome to maintain, update and extend. This led to delays in updating the site and users became less invested in the content.

Because Chesapeake already relied extensively on Microsoft technologies, executives felt that Office SharePoint Server would interoperate smoothly into its existing IT infrastructure. Working closely with the Microsoft account team and Microsoft Services, Chesapeake developed and deployed the SharePoint Server-based solution across the enterprise in less than three months. Since its implementation, the solution continues to deliver solid benefits to Chesapeake in areas ranging from enterprise search to collaboration and from business intelligence to enterprise content management.

According to Lori Garcia, manager of IT business systems at Chesapeake, one reason for the hearty welcome that users have given the new solution is its ease of adoption.

'Managers say it has been easy to instruct users on how to find information through the new solution,' Garcia said.