TMCnews Featured Article

New Zealand’s Telecom has selected Microsoft (News - Alert) Office 365, and in turn has become the biggest Office 365 customer in the Pacific nation.

Telecom will use Office 365 for Microsoft Exchange for e-mail, Lync for video conferencing, Word and Excel for documents, and SharePoint for document sharing, according to a report from the Waikato Times in New Zealand.

''Central to Telecom's growth strategy is a focus on creating greater efficiency and simplifying the way we operate and serve our customers,'' David Havercroft, chief technology officer at Telecom, explained in a statement in regards to why the company selected Office 365. ''Office 365 will support these goals by providing our staff the latest enterprise-ready software, enabling better communication and collaboration through a set of familiar and integrated productivity services.''

Telecom selected Office 365 after considering many cloud-based productivity solutions. Jordy Almgren, Microsoft's enterprise group managing director, predicts a variety of larger companies will do the same when opting for managed, cloud-based solutions.

''We took a very measured approach to ensure we went with a solution that would deliver the most benefit, and ultimately selected Office 365 as the best option for our organization,'' Havercroft told the Waikato Times. ''The same products can be offered to all staff and managed in the cloud, eliminating the need for patching, server upgrades and basic administration tasks for email, freeing up IT resources to work on value add projects, which can only mean better outcomes for our customers.'' 

There are other benefits for the New Zealand company as well. “Telecom will benefit from Microsoft’s 20 plus years of experience in productivity capability, allowing it to better serve its customers, and operate a truly modern workspace by being able to access e-mail and information from virtually any smartphone, remote PC or other mobile device,” Almgren was quoted by Geek Zone as saying.

Want to learn more about the latest in communications and technology? Then be sure to attend ITEXPO Miami 2013, Jan 29- Feb. 1 in Miami, Florida.  Stay in touch with everything happening at ITEXPO (News - Alert). Follow us on Twitter.