Vodafone hooking customers to Microsoft online services

Stephen Withers
Friday, 27 February 2009 02:36

IT Industry - Market

According to Craig, Vodafone is giving SMEs an opportunity to take advantage of facilities that have previously been the domain of their larger competitors.

The idea is to provide enterprise-class services to business customers of all sizes.

Vodafone will begin offering the Microsoft services in Germany and Spain "later in 2009." It will then spread to additional though so far unspecified markets.

The rollout pattern could be determined at least in part by Vodafone's ability to deliver fixed as well as mobile communications in various countries.

"Vodafone will offer data, voice and mobile voice in an integrated way, and then we'll add the business productivity online suites," said Giovanni Strocchi, Vodafone's director of product management for global business services.

Microsoft is also talking up the deal.

"Today's announcement is a significant step forward in our partnership with Vodafone," said Martha Béjar, corporate vice president of the communications sector at Microsoft.

"Through our work with Vodafone, we're aiming to provide solutions for a growing number of businesses that are looking for new ways to control costs and do more with less, without impacting the productivity of their people, their most valuable asset."