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Otto Japan Inc., a fashion retail company which sells its diverse product line through catalogues stores and online, has recently enhanced its email hosting platform by adopting Microsoft (News - Alert) Exchange Online.

Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft SharePoint are effective email hosting, sharing and collaborating solutions. By implementing these solutions, businesses are able to set up websites to share information across the entire organization and manage documents from start to finish.

In addition, Microsoft Exchange Online will allow for large-capacity mailboxes, fewer operational management hours and the optimization of IT costs.

"Speed and ease of use were essential," said Nobuhiko Kita of the Information Systems department at Otto Japan, in a press release. "Second, we decided cloud software would be an effective measure in our business continuity plan. After experiencing the Great East Japan Earthquake, making systems run during a disaster and protecting data on the server have become vital considerations."

In order to quickly transition to Office 365, Otto Japan requested installation support from its business associate Kyoritsu Computer & Communication Co. Ltd., which helped make the migration more effective.

Kita estimates that since the company has shifted to the cloud, the administrative man-hours have decreased by approximately 30 percent. Around 400 users companywide have adopted Office 365 as a global information-sharing environment, optimizing IT costs over a life cycle of four to five years.

"The final important point was being able to use the system globally without issues," Kita added. "Since our employees have to make many trips abroad, a service that allows us to use it freely around the globe was a precondition for adoption."

In related email hosting news, TMCnet reported that InterCall (News - Alert), a subsidiary of West Corporation and a conferencing and collaboration services provider, is now offering Microsoft Office 365 productivity tools.