Microsoft has signed up yet another major business to use its Office 365 cloud-based software service. Today, the company announced that the Spain-based telecommunications provider Telefónica will be giving its 130,000 employees in 24 countries access to both Office 365 and the Yammer social networking service.
Microsoft"s press release states that Telefónica started a pilot program with Office 365 in 2012 and started full deployment of the software package in Latin America in April. It will expand Office 365 to its European outlets sometime later this year. Microsoft claims that by using Office 365 and Yammer, Telefónica will reduce its collaboration costs "by up to 20 percent".
In March, Yammer added support for instantly translating messages into other languages and that support was one of the reasons why Telefónica included Yammer in its Office 365 deal with Microsoft. Adrian Steel, the European production hub lead and global director for Telefónic, stated:
By automatically converting conversations to a person’s native language, Yammer will help our people work more efficiently than ever and focus on delivering superior value to our customers. Other critical capabilities included unified communications via Microsoft Lync 2013 and cloud-based storage via SkyDrive Pro.
This decision by Telefónica follows word in January that the European retailer Tesco, the largest private business in Europe, has signed up to use Office 365.
Source: Microsoft | Image via Telefonica