May 30, 2008. Dallas, TX. Cogent Company announces its participation in the Microsoft SharePoint Deployment Planning Services (SDPS) program. SDPS is a Microsoft customer Software Assurance (SA) benefit. The service is a pre-defined paid service offering delivered by partners to plan an effective SharePoint deployment offering customers a 1, 3, 5, 10 or 15 day deployment planning service based on their individual software assurance benefit level.  Cogent will work with Microsoft customers to develop a customized SharePoint Portal Server deployment plan for their specific environment. SDPS helps customers get a SharePoint deployment plan in place and minimize the cost of up-front services investment . SDPS is designed to help organizations plan an effective deployment of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server and includes a broad range of planning tools and services that help optimize the effectiveness of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server’s core capabilities, lower the cost of deployment, and improve organizational productivity. Service areas include collaboration, portals, enterprise search, as well as web and portal content management.

"Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (SharePoint Server 2007) is stimulating high interest in the marketplace right now," said Marc Hoppers, Cogent Partner. "Most folks we talk to own SharePoint as a part of their enterprise agreements. One group of these companies don't even know that they own SharePoint Server 2007 and therefore are not deploying it. There's another group of these companies that are under-utilizing SharePoint Server 2007 and tapping few of its powerful features throughout the enterprise." By assisting Cogent's clients deploy SharePoint, Cogent is seeing companies that are realizing the following benefits:

• Increased personal productivity
• Streamlined process and more effective content management
• Improved business insight across the business
• Better connections between people and the information and expertise they need
• Simplified organization-wide access to both structured and unstructured information across disparate systems

"The best part of this service is that Microsoft is willing to offset the cost of the service by allowing their customers use their SA benefits," said Hoppers, who is also working with Microsoft on the next generation of this service, called Office Business Value Planning Service.

This service can help companies plan and deploy the following Microsoft products:

• Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007
• Microsoft® Office Enterprise 2007/Microsoft® Office
• Professional Plus 2007
• Microsoft® Exchange Server 2007
• Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007
• Microsoft® Office PerformancePoint™ Server 2007
• Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005 database platform

To learn more about how you can take advantage of Cogent's SharePoint Deployment Planning Services , call Cogent at 214-341-1004.