BPOS Rocks

SkyTeam Alliance migrates to Microsoft Online

This morning a press release has been issued by Microsoft Holland about the migration of SkyTeam Alliance to Microsoft Online/BPOS.

 

Below you'll find the exerpt:

SkyTeam, a global alliance of airline carriers with nine members - KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, Air France, Alitalia Aeroflot, Delta Air Lines, China Southern Airlines, Czech Airlines, Aeromexico and Korean Air and two associate carriers Air Europe and Kenya Airways – have deployed the full Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite for nearly 450 employees, who are often working mobile. BPOS enables these employees to access their company data anyplace, anytime. BPOS is implemented at SkyTeam by Wortell, the first Microsoft partner in the Netherlands implementing BPOS with customers.

 

Bruno Faccini, IT responsible for the SkyTeam Alliance: “SkyTeam has chosen BPOS because we want to minimize IT management. Now we don’t have to invest in a server infrastructure, software licenses and IT personnel. This way we think we can reduce out IT costs with 30 percent, compared to a traditional environment. The familiarity of the tools means no time is lost with training, and the seamless integration with our existing IT environment were important reasons to choose Microsoft’s online applications. We are already using Exchange Online, Office Communications Online and Live Meeting. Next week SharePoint Online will go live globally, starting with a training at KLM.”

GlaxoSmithKline Microsoft Online Services video

Earlier I posted an item about GlaxoSmithKline moving to the cloud. Someone just pointed me to a YouTube video in which the GlaxoSmithKline CIO talks about the reasons for their move to the cloud and decision to use BPOS:

Eastside Basketball Club about BPOS

In this YouTube video Eastside Basketball Club talks about their move to the cloud with Microsoft Online Services BPOS. The nonprofit organization is a startup which formed 6 months ago and decided they didn't want to spend money on a new IT infrastructure but use the Microsoft Online Services instead. The video was taped by Vorsite who helped them get online:

Considering SaaS e-mail? Read this report

Collaborative Strategy Guild published a report for IT decision-makers in small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) who are considering software as a service (SaaS) e-mail options. The report examines the requirements SMBs have, provides an overview of the market and vendors and offers guidance for how organizations can evaluate their e-mail investment by looking at a combination of productivity gains as well as cost savings.

Executive Overview:

As economic concerns strain business executives who need to balance costs with operational innovation, software-as-a-service (SaaS) e-mail becomes an attractive alternative to traditional on-premise e-mail deployments. Online e-mail provides rich user experiences, predictable costs, and convenience. New SaaS e-mail delivery and cost models are changing the way businesses acquire e-mail services. These new opportunities are prompting executives, vendors, and users to push IT decision mak-ers to evaluate existing e-mail strategies and consider changing to SaaS for the com-pany e-mail.

The good news is that SMBs now have more options than ever to get business-grade e-mail services at reasonable prices and without the operational headaches of the past . The bad news is that e-mail market dynamics now mean more complex choices for customers who need to spend time sorting through their options.

You can read the entire report at the Collaborative Strategy Guild: http://collaborativestrategyguild.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/TheRealValueofSaaSforSMBv3.pdf

(Thanx Jennifer)

GlaxoSmithKline moves to the cloud and saves 30%

Peter de Haas just published an interesting post about GlaxoSmithKline who moved to BPOS:

GlaxoSmithKline already in January announced they plan tp save up to 30% on their Communication and Collaboration infrastructure costs by moving from Lotus Notes/Domino to Microsoft Online Services.

Forrester created a research paper on this that provides more background. Very interesting read for this still on Lotus Notes :

Executive Summary

GlaxoSmithKline is moving approximately 90,000 email users to Microsoft's Exchange Online, a cloud-delivered service. To make the decision, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) went through a rigorous internal discovery process to calculate costs, find dependencies, and analyze its workforce. The result is that GSK is able to optimize its messaging and collaboration platform to meet the full range of its end users' requirements — while saving on its ongoing costs. To make your own cloud-based opportunity, learn from GSK's experience and: 1) analyze your workforce needs; 2) tier your workforce to optimize costs; and 3) calculate your own fully loaded costs.

Continue at source : Forrester.com

Scandic to use BPOS

Scandic, a big European hotel chain, will use Microsoft Online Services. The organization is investigating the functionality of BPOS (especially SharePoint Online and Exchange Online). Scandic will use BPOS to lower its IT cost.