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While every company has a different strategy on what they think it will take to be successful, most can agree that without Office 365 in place, a cloud-based platform that drives communication and collaboration amongst large workforces, chances of their business succeeding are relatively small. That is why as the day’s inch closer to the holiday season, otherwise known as the best time of the year, the space is expanding significantly.

This week, news broke that the University of Wisconsin-Madison is currently focused on its project of transitioning the campus over to the robust Office 365 platform.

After looking at options to improve e-mail and calendaring capabilities, the Administrative Excellence initiative’s Email and Calendaring Team initially decided earlier this year that Office 365 was the best suite for the university’s individual needs, which range from functional, technical and date security requirements, all the way to Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act requirements

"Streamlining and coordination of campus calendars will create efficiency and save staff time currently used to sync the many incompatible systems now in use," Provost Paul M. DeLuca Jr. said in a recent article. "At the same time, it makes sense to have everyone in the campus community operating from the same email program, generating economies of scale for the university and reducing the difficulties that arise from having disparate operating systems."

In other news, New Zealand’s Telecom revealed it has implemented Microsoft (News - Alert) Office 365. By leveraging this intuitive solution, the company is now touted as the largest Office 365 customer located within the Pacific nation.

According to company officials, Telecom will be utilizing Office 365 for e-mail, Lync for video conferencing, Word and Excel for documents, as well as SharePoint in order to share documents without any complexity. 

''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.''

Closing out the week, Research In Motion unveiled its BlackBerry (News - Alert) Business Cloud Services product for Microsoft Office 365 to South African enterprise customers.

The Web-based interface assists administrators in rapidly and efficiently completing business critical tasks, such as resetting passwords or finding, locking and wiping lost or misplaced devices from almost anywhere.

Some of its most impressive features include wireless synchronization with Microsoft Exchange Online e-mail, calendar and organizer data from a BlackBerry smartphone; and improved device manageability functions.

Be sure to check back each and every week to the Office 365 community for all of the latest news in the space!

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.