New customers add more than 350,000 people to the cloud as Office 365 turns one

Now available in 88 markets and 32 languages, Office 365 is being adopted by global brands across industries to improve communication, boost collaboration and save money. On the heels of yesterday's anniversary news, here's a bit more about the latest brands choosing Office 365 to transform the way they do business. These new customers encompass over 350,000 seats of Office 365:

Retail

Lowe's has signed an agreement with Microsoft to implement Microsoft Office 365 across more than 1,745 stores, 200,000 employees, and its corporate offices in the United States, Canada and Mexico. Office 365 will help the home improvement retailer improve customer service by providing collaboration tools to increase communication among its stores and employees. Learn more about Lowe's and Office 365 here.

Hallmark Cards, the largest creator of greeting cards in the United States, recently deployed Office 365 to over 9,500 people across the company. The company chose Office 365 because it seamlessly integrates with existing Microsoft technologies, such as SharePoint. "The decision to move to Office 365 is part of a broader strategy to provide an integrated, unified platform to increase productivity and connect our employees across the globe," said Tony Marshall, director of Enterprise Architecture at Hallmark.

Renner, the second-largest clothing department store chain in Brazil, sought a technology partner with a strategic vision. "This was Microsoft´s big advantage: It was the only company that proposed a solution that met all our business needs," said Leandro Balbinot, CIO at Renner S/A. "Microsoft offered the most complete solution, including simple system administration via the cloud; a flexible price structure - important when the user is paying for the service; and integration into our physical systems, such as mobile devices. We found that the competition couldn't deliver all our requirements to the same level as that offered by Microsoft.

Restaurants

Burger King was founded in 1954 and is the second-largest fast food hamburger chain in the world. According to Mike Capote, chief privacy officer and senior director of IT at Burger King, "With Office 365, we have a unified platform for communication and collaboration, helping save us money and gain efficiency."

Construction

The Hilti Group supplies the worldwide construction industry with technologically leading products, systems and services. The company has a large mobile workforce, including sales teams and field engineers spread around the world. Hilti chose Microsoft over other cloud solutions for its mobile collaboration and communication capabilities.

"Hilti is a global brand with the challenges of a global company - distributed workers and finite resources," said Tobias Roelz, head of IT Workplace and Application Services at Hilti Group. "With Office 365, we will have the latest collaboration technology always up-to-date for use by almost 22,000 employees around the world. This will make us more connected and, in the end, more competitive."

Aviation

Japan Airlines is bringing Office 365 to 20,000 employees to unify communication and collaboration. The company chose Office 365 because its employees are familiar with Office's productivity tools, and it believes Microsoft's expertise in supporting large enterprises in the cloud is the right choice for its business.

Energy

Origin Energy, the largest retail energy generation business in Australia and New Zealand with over 4.4 million customers, is moving to Office 365 to ensure its employees stay connected. "Office 365 is a key cornerstone in our strategy to take advantage of public cloud services. With Office 365, we get the benefits of Microsoft's latest versions of software and achieve greater efficiencies as a result. We will be utilizing all the Office 365 services - Exchange for email, Lync for videoconferencing, and SharePoint for collaboration. With the new Office 365 service model, we get the best global service for the best possible value," said Geoff Wenborn, group manager, IT Strategy and Governance at Origin Energy.

And, with the launch of Office 365 for education, we announced a number of schools who are rolling the service out to faculty, staff and students. Visit here for more details.

Watch this space as we welcome more organizations of all kinds to Office 365.

Additional information:

• What is Office 365?
• Office 365 Customer Stories
• Office 365 trial

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--Stephen Bury

See how customers are using Office 365 here.

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