Microsoft Business Division Virtual Presskit

Two Degrees moves to the cloud - professional services firm saves 44 percent on communications with Microsoft Online Services. (Feb. 9, 2010)
Case Study

Meet Ron Markezich, the Microsoft corporate vice president responsible for Microsoft’s Online Services business. Learn about Ron’s career at Microsoft, and hear his thoughts on the past, present, and future of Microsoft Online Services. (Feb. 1, 2010)

Gartner published its first ever Magic Quadrant for UC as a Service, North America, positioning Microsoft in the Challengers Quadrant. (Dec. 9, 2009)

Gartner has positioned Microsoft in the Leaders Quadrant in the Unified Communications Magic Quadrant. (Sept. 1, 2009)

Tyco moves to Microsoft Online Services - results include better business control, enterprise data security and flexible IT management (Nov. 2, 2009)

Chris Bryant gives us a first look at the details of the new free Office Web applications and tells us how they fit in with other similar applications like Google Docs. (Sept. 17, 2009)

Recent Announcements

Industry Buzz

"A mere 3% was generated from licensing revenues on products like Google Apps and enterprise search products. As far as the enterprise is concerned, despite many highly publicized wins (like Los Angeles and New Zealand), it is clearly a market that still hasn't amounted to much for the search giant." – Julie Bort, Network World (Jan. 21, 2010)

"According to Google, the United States state governments have literally handed over our public data to be held and managed by a private company which has well-publicized partnerships with other governments such as China. The data is physically stored in Google’s buildings, on Google’s servers, managed by Google’s employees. This means Google now controls our government’s access to its own data." – Clint Boulton, eWeek (via Sherri Davidoff of Philosecurity) (Dec. 28, 2009)

"CSC has won a contract to provide IT support for 30,000 employees of the United Kingdom’s postal service that will be using Microsoft’s cloud-based offerings for e-mail, collaboration, and chat. It’s a big win for Microsoft Online, and also shows how outsourcing companies are adapting their businesses to cloud computing." – Mary Hayes Weier, InformationWeek (Nov. 24, 2009)

"We wouldn't ask people to get rid of Microsoft Office and use Google Docs because it is not mature yet." – Dave Girouard, President of Google's enterprise division in Computerworld (Nov. 13, 2009)

"Microsoft currently has the edge in large enterprise accounts. Google spent a lot of PR dollars to promote its recent win of a 35,000-seat account at Rentokil Initial, along with its 30,000-seat contract with City of Los Angeles. Microsoft Online Services is currently scoring much larger wins." – Phil Wainewright, ZDNet (Nov. 4, 2009)

“Through a new partnership with Microsoft, we are able to expand and extend a cloud computing approach to a suite of messaging software packages for the public institutions of the University System of Ohio, as well as to private colleges and universities.” – from “Ohio Takes to the Clouds” op-ed in Campus Technology (Oct. 22, 2009)

"The evolution here isn't, 'Gee, let's do something in the cloud or SaaS' … Our Lotus Notes platform was getting to end of life. The question came up innocently that, given we'll have to spend a lot of money here, is there something we can do that's smarter?" – GlaxoSmithKline's CIO Bill Louv on deciding to move all 115,000 employees worldwide to the online, monthly subscription Exchange Server and SharePoint Server offerings, in InformationWeek (Oct. 10, 2009)

"Still, a new study from Forrester Research suggests that Google's progress will come gradually. … In a survey of 2,001 information workers, only 10 percent of the people using Microsoft Outlook said they would be happy to have their e-mail switched." – Steve Lohr, The New York Times (Oct. 8, 2009)

"While the Office Web Apps are currently only available as a Technical Preview (with a formal beta program to be announced later this year), they're already shaping up to become a formidable challenge to Zoho and Google Docs. … The results are jaw-dropping." – Neil McAllister, InfoWorld (Oct. 7, 2009)

Voices from the Microsoft Business Division

Julie White, director, Exchange Product Management Group, wrote a blog post announcing a training program to Lotus professionals to help them meet the growing demand for expertise with Microsoft business productivity technologies. This helps make migrations to Microsoft Unified Communications products much easier and cost effective. (Jan. 15, 2010)
Chris Capossela, senior vice president, Information Worker Product Management Group, engages in a Q&A regarding the future of Microsoft Office, social media, his personal history and other topics. The article, a part of Eric Lai's "The Grill" series, highlights the many facets of Capossela's life, including his stint as a successful junior tennis player. - Eric Lai, ComputerWorld (Dec. 15, 2009)
Stephen Elop, president, Microsoft Business Division, participated in an Economist-sponsored debate on cloud computing with Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff. - Ludwig Siegele, The Economist (Nov. 20, 2009)
Teresa Carlson, vice president, Microsoft Federal, blogs about security in the cloud and datacenter. Carlson joined Chris Niehaus, lead product manager for Microsoft Federal, for a Q&A with Kim Hart of The Hill's "Hillicon Valley," and the topic is also discussed in a clip from Federal News Radio with Susie Adams, chief technology officer for Microsoft Federal. (Nov. 18, 2009)
Gartner analysts Neil MacDonald and David Mitchell Smith conduct a Gartner Fellows Interview with Ray Ozzie, Microsoft Chief Software Architect, on cloud computing. (Oct. 30, 2009)
In this video, Stephen Elop, President, Microsoft Business Division, is interviewed in front of 5,000 CIOs and IT directors by Gartner analysts Neil McDonald and Brian Gammage at Gartner Symposium/ITxpo Orlando 2009. (Oct. 27, 2009)
In this Forbes video, reporter Andy Greenberg speaks with Stephen Elop, President of the Microsoft Business Division, about how the cloud impacts Microsoft’s business model and how Office stacks up against competitors. (October 2009)
Stephen Elop, president of Microsoft Business Division, announces new developments in the company’s cloud-computing applications for businesses. Click here for Live Meeting replay from the London teleconference. (Nov. 2, 2009)
Jeff Teper, corporate vice president, SharePoint Server, writes about the process of designing and building SharePoint Server, including this nugget about the impact of SharePoint Online on the engineering process. (Oct. 12, 2009)
Michael Schultz, director of marketing for Microsoft Office Services, explains the Office Web Apps Technical Preview program and the company’s mission to empower people to work anywhere, anytime, on virtually any device. (Sept. 17, 2009)
Chris Capossela, Senior Vice President of the Information Worker Product Management Group, meets with CNET to discuss Microsoft Office 2010. (April 9, 2009)

Fast Facts on Services from Microsoft Business Division

To date, more than 7,000 partners around the world have joined the Microsoft Partner Program for Microsoft Online Services, making it the most successful partner ecosystem for online business-class services.
Thousands of educational institutions in 86 countries have enrolled in Live@edu.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0/Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online has more than 18,000 customers and more than 900,000 users.
Microsoft Office Live Workspace now has 11 million users sharing, storing, and working together, and Microsoft Office Small Business - the largest commercial services offering at Microsoft - has allowed 2.5 million small businesses to create professional-looking websites to connect with their customers.
Microsoft Exchange Hosted Services (EHS) processes between 2 and 4 billion messages per day.
4 out of 5 Business Productivity Online Suite seats sold to date have come from partners.