Emerging from the wreck of the once mighty Eastman Kodak, Kodak Alaris has taken a Microsoft-centric approach to relaunching as a $US1.2 billon startup. The organisation with over 4700 staff in 30 countries is faced with a 2 ½ year task to move to an entirely new ERP system and replace business processes based on the previous environment comprising SAP and Lotus Notes Groupware.

CIO John Milazzo told the Convergence EMEA 2014 forum this week that the company has chosen to standardise on Microsoft applications, including Dynamics AX as its ERP platform.

“The cornerstone of our IT environment revolves around our chosen ERP [enterprise resource planning] solution,” Milazzo said. “After a robust selection approach which involved close consideration of Gartner’s research, Kodak Alaris chose Microsoft Dynamics AX for their ERP needs, Office 365 for productivity and is excited for what the Azure cloud platform offering brings to the business.”

Christian Pedersen, Microsoft Dynamics AX general manager, writes about Milazzo’s comments in a blog post. “At the end of the day, for Kodak Alaris it’s all about helping customers unlock the power of images and information,” Pedersen writes.

“To achieve this Kodak Alaris needs the tools they select to be customer-centric as well. This in turn enables Kodak Alaris to do the best possible job providing the solutions their customers’ needs. This shared perspective with Microsoft on customer centricity is a common ground that has helped fuel the partnership between the two companies and resulted in Microsoft being chosen as the technology foundation.”

Writing on the Microsoft Dynamics blog, Pedersen said, “According to the Turnaround Management Association (TMA), a global non-profit organization comprised of turnaround and corporate renewal professionals, the creation of Kodak Alaris is “one of the most innovative in the history of cross-border restructurings." Their parent company is a UK based pension fund for existing and former Eastman Kodak employees in the United Kingdom. The fund saw great value in the capabilities of what was to become “Kodak Alaris” and opted to take these as payment for the debt. 

“In the past, heavy customization of the company’s SAP implementation meant taking advantage of upgrades became challenging. Upgrading would require going back and modifying prior customization. A cost prohibitive exercise.”

“With Microsoft Dynamics, John’s plans for Kodak Alaris are for the organization to be able to benefit from what is offered in software and to be able to customize business processes without customizing code or implementations. Predictability and repeatability are critical for the company’s long term goals. As a part of this, Kodak Alaris are planning on utilizing Lifecycle Services to manage both the life cycle of their deployment and their business process which make Kodak Alaris unique.”

“Combining Business Productivity (with Dynamics), individual productivity (with Office) with the power of the cloud (Azure) Kodak Alaris are on track to leverage the key pillars of the Microsoft Cloud for Business. “The scalability and flexibility of Azure are really exciting. Previously if we needed more computer power for any reason we’d have to go through a complex internal process to make the request. Being able to scale up and down as needed based on capacity is a big deal for us being able to support the business with agility,” says John Milazzo.