Microsoft Office 365 available to Australian businesses of all sizes

SYDNEY, Australia – June 29, 2011: Microsoft announced today the worldwide availability of Microsoft Office 365, the company’s newest cloud productivity and collaboration service for businesses of all sizes. Available in Australia and 40 other markets, Office 365 brings together Microsoft Office, Microsoft SharePoint Online, Microsoft Exchange Online and Microsoft Lync Online in an always-up-to-date cloud service, at a predictable monthly subscription.

Office 365 is designed to provide the familiar user experience and feature-rich functionality that hundreds of millions of people and businesses around the world have come to know and trust in Microsoft. Today, Office 365 enables businesses of any size and their employees to work and collaborate in new ways from virtually anywhere across virtually any internet-enabled device.

Australian businesses can now purchase Microsoft Office 365 via Telstra’s T-Suite service, or, eligible Microsoft Enterprise Agreement (EA) customers can choose to purchase directly through their EA.

“Enabling business productivity sits at the very core of Microsoft’s DNA. Office 365 is designed with one mission in mind: help businesses run better by providing a new generation of world-class collaboration tools in the cloud,” said Oscar Trimboli, Director, Information Worker Business Group, Microsoft Australia.

“Through Office 365, the very smallest organisations can now access the most sophisticated, enterprise class collaboration tools for a price per user, per month that is roughly the cost of a sandwich. The playing field has truly been leveled,” he said.

“In an era where social media is driving and changing the culture of communications, our customers also told us they needed to enable their employees to collaborate and communicate in more personalised and immediate ways. With Lync, for example, we’re providing solutions that meet those needs through video calling, instant messaging, virtual meetings, desktop sharing and the ability to work on documents at the same time.”

Telstra’s Executive Director of Small Business, Charles Agee, said: “While Microsoft will continue to sell Office 365 directly to its Enterprise Agreement customer base, Telstra will be the exclusive reseller of Office 365 to all other Australian customers, which will cement Telstra’s position as the leading Australian provider of communication and collaboration solutions.”

“Telstra is pleased to be one of the first global partners to launch Office 365 through our strategic partnership with Microsoft, which will help meet the growing demand for cloud services from our customers as they look for ways to innovate and grow their businesses.”

A Game-Changer for Businesses of Two to Two Hundred Thousand

Moving to the cloud with Office 365 does not require a business to change the way it works, because the service is based on familiar productivity tools that people know and trust, including Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Access and more. With Office 365, people can stay on the “same page” using instant messaging and virtual meetings with people who are just down the hall or across the world. They can work on files and documents at the same time and share ideas as easily as they can share calendars. Office 365 gives people new ways to work together with ease, on virtually any device.

“Our recruitment company has uniquely tapped into the stay-at-home-mum workforce, which wouldn’t have been possible without cloud technology” said Andy Springer, Co-Founder and Talent Director, Rookie Recruits.

“As well as ensuring our costs remain both predictable and low, our migration to Office 365, will give us feature-rich enterprise grade technology. This will allow our employees to work from their chosen device, through their chosen browser, as easily at home as they could from the office and keeping everyone connected to each other.”

Klaus Schelp, IT Manager, SBS Australia said: “Our business challenges meant we required a new collaboration platform including an email solution that could be delivered with minimal disruption and with the quickest route to being live. We chose Office 365 as it provides us a tight integration and collaboration and was already familiar to our employees. It also freed up the IT department’s valuable time allowing them instead to focus on business critical projects.”

Office 365 Partners

Microsoft is building a massive partner ecosystem around Office 365, including systems integrators, software vendors, resellers, and other partners.

“Microsoft has built, and is continuing to develop, a robust partner ecosystem around Office 365. Through Telstra, the exclusive reseller, we can take advantage of the T-Suite platform and the cloud to reach more customers.” said Steven Anderton, General Manager, OSC.

Nick Sone, General Manager, Ensyst said: “Office 365 will make it easier for our customers to work from anywhere while offering superior flexibility and control of their IT environment. They’ll be able to access the most advanced productivity solution in the market – which is always-up-to-date.”

Loryan Strant, Director, Paradyne said: “Office 365 provides our SMB customers with the tools that they need to compete with the big boys of the industry.”

About Office 365

Office 365 offers a range of service plans for a predictable monthly price per user per month. For example, with Office 365 for small businesses, customers can be up and running with Office Web Apps, Microsoft Exchange Online, Microsoft SharePoint Online, Microsoft Lync Online and an external website in minutes, for $7.90 AUD per user, per month. These tools put enterprise-grade email, shared documents, instant messaging, video and Web conferencing, portals, and more at everyone’s fingertips.

Availability

Office 365 for small businesses and Office 365 for enterprises are available now. Businesses can sign up for a 30-day complimentary trial at www.microsoft.com/en-au/office365 or from their local Microsoft partner. Follow Office 365 on Twitter (@Office365), Facebook (Office 365) and the Office 365 blog at http://community.office365.com for the latest information.

About T-Suite

T-Suite® is Telstra’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) portal that offers business cloud computing applications. T-Suite makes available to small and medium business a range of applications and services usually only available to big business for a predictable monthly fee.

For further information, or to arrange an interview, please contact: Alice Ridgway (For Microsoft media enquiries), Howorth Communications, 02 8281 3833 / 0400 375 544, [email protected]

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