Telenor and Microsoft merge in the cloud

Telenor and Microsoft merge in the cloud Press Releases: 17 December 2012

Telenor and Microsoft have signed a global syndication agreement which means that collaboration and office solutions for companies will merge into one in the cloud.

The agreement, between Microsoft and Telenor Group, gives Telenor the right to sell licenses for Office 365 as well as the company's other services. Telenor is, therefore, one of the first telecom operators in the world to offer a telephony service within Lync Online from Microsoft Office 365.

Telenor Norway will, in cooperation with Telenor Business Internet Services (Telenor's cloud services company), be the first to offer the solution to its business customers. The agreement means that they will receive two professional business solutions as a single integrated package: Telenor's mobile business network Mobilt Bedriftsnett and Microsoft Office 365, with voice included. Telenor will launch Office 365 in January 2013 and expects to have the solution for voice integration ready for the market during the fourth quarter of 2013.

Through this agreement, we are expanding our provision of cloud computing services with a solution that covers the communication needs of companies in one single package. We think this will satisfy a market need that is currently not being met, says Telenor's manager of the business market Bjrn Ivar Moen.

Considerable interest We are delighted that Telenor is launching a service that brings together the best of both our worlds, says Dagfinn Rings, director of business and partners at Microsoft Norway.

With Telenor's telephony services fully integrated into Lync Online and Office 365, companies will be able to optimise their telecomms, collaboration and IT infrastructure. We have already seen considerable interest amongst customers for this type of solution in the markets where Telenor will be launching the service, says Rings.

Accessible The use of cloud services makes it easier to establish and introduce new solutions in a business as they do not require large investments or extensive internal technical projects. The company will always have the latest updated version and will avoid having to worry about the security and operation of the service. This is taken care of in the cloud by the supplier.

The two business solutions, Mobilt Bedriftsnett and Office 365, are accessible in the cloud and run by the Telenor and Microsoft data centres. This enables economies of scale and the solution will be equally accessible to all companies regardless of size.

We have long experience of delivering both voice and data services over the internet. Examples include security solutions, messaging services, central switchboards and PABX solutions (Public Automatic Branch Exchange), says Bjrn Ivar Moen.

Today, we have more than two million customers in Norway who use our cloud services on a daily basis. The fact that software and applications can now also be supplied as cloud services creates entirely new opportunities for integration with telecommunication services. Telenor's most important emphasis within cloud-based services is on adding value to our partners' applications alongside our own communication services, particularly within mobility and collaboration, says Moen.

Telenor and Microsoft go back a long way together and the development within Unified Communication in particular has brought the two companies even closer together. They now cooperate in a variety of areas and on many different levels.

For further information, please contact:

PR Manager at Telenor Norway, Kristin V. Tnnessen, Tel. 934 80 648, kvt@telenor.com

Director of Communications at Microsoft, Christine Korme, Tel. 918 25 519, ckorme@microsoft.com

LINK:	http://www.telenor.com/news-and-media/press-releases/2012/telenor-and-...
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