Microsoft Office 365 Scores Big with IAG Contract

Put another tick in the Microsoft (MSFT) Office 365 win column. The cloud-based office productivity suite scored a major new customer that is rolling out the cloud service to its entire 58,000-strong user base. The customer in question? International Airlines Group (IAG), which is the parent company of British Airways, Iberia, IAG Cargo and Avios.

In the announcement, Microsoft noted that IAG chosen Office 365 to enable its workforce to collaborate virtually anytime, anywhere around the world. And around the world is right. The British-Spanish multinational airline holding company is the sixth-largest airline in the world and serves customers on every continent (okay, you got me; there are no flights to Antarctica).

A company the size of IAG doesn't select a technology platform to roll out to its entire user base on a whim, so it's safe to assume it did its due diligence and checked into a variety of other cloud services that compete with Office 365. Although no competitors were specified, it's likely IAG chose Office 365 over Google (GOOG) Apps and other competitors on the space, making for a huge Microsoft win.

"Giving our employees the tools and freedom to achieve more in their day-to-day activities was a key component in our decision to engage with Microsoft," said Nigel Underwood, IAG CIO, in a prepared statement. "Office 365 will allow employees to collaborate and achieve their work tasks regardless of the platform, product or device."

Additionally, IAG expects its airlines to be more efficient and reduce costs because of Office 365 deployments.

More specifically, IAG plans to use Office 365 as a key element of its strategy to improve internal communication and collaboration through the use of social tools. One of the ways it plans to do that is by using Yammer to bring internal communication into a private, secured enterprise network that enables communication, collaboration and the sharing of information throughout the organization.