Sprint, Microsoft Partner on Cloud Solutions

Sprint plans to offer Microsoft Office 365 to small and mid-sized businesses before the year is out.

The carrier says the power of its network, combined with Microsoft’s cloud-based productivity and collaboration solutions, will give businesses new ways to enhance productivity, reduce costs and collaborate with customers and partners while also extending the cloud-based communication tools to mobile workforces.

Office 365 brings together cloud versions of the most trusted productivity and collaboration products with the latest version of the Redmond, Wash.-based company’s client software and companion Web applications. It provides for secure and virtually anywhere access to email, calendars, Office Web Apps, instant messaging, conferencing and file sharing, allowing employees to work on the go, on nearly any device, Microsoft said. It includes built-in anti-virus and spam-fighting technology and a 99.9 percent uptime guarantee.

When Sprint makes Office 365 available, it plans to bundle it with value-added services to create solutions that further increase productivity and unleash the power of todays mobile workforce. Small and mid-sized companies will be able to access some of the most comprehensive enterprise-class solutions available today, and Sprint will make it easier for them to take advantage of cloud services and experience the cost savings, scalability and flexibility needed to help them grow, the carrier said.

This marks the expansion of the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) portfolio already available from Sprint which includes support, office and field-productivity services. Using the as-a-service” model, Sprint will deliver new applications to round out its portfolio and enable customers to take advantage of the benefits of cloud-based services.