Telecom Lead India: Mobile service provider Bharti Airtel
has tied up with Microsoft to offer cloud based Office 365 solutions to Small
and Medium Businesses through its cloud platform.
SMBs will benefit as they will have access to Microsoft
Office 365 and address their connectivity and productivity needs.
Office 365 along with Airtel’s DSL and Internet Leased
Ports/Lines (ILP) services will enable SMBs to create websites with their own
domain name, access to the latest releases from Office 365, anti-virus &
anti-spam solutions, and access to documents and emails on smart phones using
Airtel’s network.
Bhaskar Pramanik, chairman, Microsoft India, said
Microsoft’s partnership will allow Bharti Airtel’s customers to continue to
stay ahead of the curve through solutions that truly fit their needs. The
agreement will enable SMBs to take advantage of a secure cloud computing
environment at an opex model based pricing.
Sanjay Kapoor, CEO – India & South Asia, Bharti
Airtel, said the partnership will allow Airtel to become a virtual CIO for
its SMB customers.
SMB segment has shown a high adoption of Cloud computing
especially SaaS – which contributes more than 50 percent to the overall cloud
market. Airtel will utilize Microsoft’s technology suite to offer cost
effective and secure cloud services in a high growth SaaS market.
Microsoft has already tied up with several telecom
players in America to offer Office 365 solutions to SMBs.
Recently, mobile service provider Sprint will offer Microsoft Office 365
to small and mid-sized businesses this year.
Microsoft’s cloud-based productivity and collaboration
solutions will benefit enterprises as they can enhance productivity, reduce
costs and collaborate with customers and partners while also extending the
cloud-based communication tools to mobile workforces.
The association with Airtel is happening at a time when
the Indian telecom major is looking at increasing data revenue.
In 2011, Microsoft announced the public beta of Microsoft Office 365,
the company’s next generation cloud productivity service for businesses of all
sizes, in India. But Indian SMBs will be gaining the result of these
cloud-based business solutions in a big way now.
