| Global Organizations Choose Microsoft Cloud Applications |
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03/11/2009 15:45 (18 Day 00:20 minutes ago) | |||||
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The FINANCIAL -- On November 2 Microsoft Business Division President Stephen Elop announced that the Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS), Microsoft Corp.’s business communication and collaboration software delivered as a service, will be available in 15 additional countries and regions later this week.
New customers including Aon Corporation, Aviva PLC, Barry-Wehmiller, Hofstra University, Lions Gate Entertainment, McDonald’s Corporation, Rexel Group, Swedish Red Cross, SkyTeam Alliance, Tyco Flow Control, University System of Ohio, Westcon Group Inc. and hundreds of others have chosen the Business Productivity Online Suite in recent months.
“Global organizations such as McDonald’s, Rexel Group and Tyco are choosing Microsoft Online Services for the rich capabilities, flexibility and value they deliver,” Elop said. “In just a year, we’ve grown to 36 countries and more than a million paying users, and we’re not slowing down. We’ll continue to bring new innovations and deliver the software and services businesses need to succeed.”
“Within McDonald’s, collaboration and communication tools are critical to our success and ongoing innovation, and with Microsoft Online Services, we found a cost-effective yet familiar, intuitive solution that we could trust with our business communications,” said Chris Millington, global chief technology officer and senior vice president of Shared Services at McDonald’s. “We have already completed over half of the corporate rollout and, by early in the next year, we will be fully deployed throughout our organization. With Microsoft Online Services, we expect to reduce our IT costs and increase our productivity.”
“At Rexel, one of our key IT initiatives is to improve collaboration and communication to support the evolution of our business model. We looked at a variety of offerings, and we selected Microsoft Online Services as a cost-effective yet familiar solution that could meet our requirements for reliability, security and ease-of-use,” said Olivier Baldassari, chief information officer at Rexel Group. “We have already started our rollout, and with Exchange Online, we will consolidate 42 e-mail systems into one, reducing our corresponding IT costs by at least 30 percent.”
New Pricing
Thanks to rapid customer adoption, global scale and improved efficiencies from new software such as Exchange Server 2010, Microsoft is reducing the price of the Business Productivity Online Suite as well as Microsoft Exchange Online, Microsoft Office SharePoint Online and Microsoft Office Communications Online. With the price reduction, the Business Productivity Online Suite is now $10 (U.S.) per user per month.
New Capabilities in the Cloud
Microsoft Online Services are updated every 90 days with new capabilities. This quarter, the updates will include increasing mailbox storage to 25 GB for users of the standard service, as well as new administration scripting capabilities.
Availability
Later this week, Microsoft will expand the availability of the Business Productivity Online Suite, including commercial availability in Singapore and trials in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Czech Republic, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Israel, Malaysia, Mexico, Poland, Puerto Rico, Romania and Taiwan; commercial availability in India is also expected later this year. This will bring availability to a total of 36 countries and regions, making this the only cloud-based solution that is truly ready for global business.
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