CRN Network
After a 100-day trial, Microsoft has announced the commercial availability of its Online Services including BPOS and Deskless Worker suite in India. What’s more, the company has also slashed the subscription fees of its Online Services by up to 50 percent.
“The response to BPOS trials has been extremely positive. Nearly 1,800 Indian companies have signed up to run trial version. Both, enterprises and SMBs are exploring online or hybrid models in order to realize improved bottomline. While enterprises will leverage a combination of on-premise and cloud services, SMBs are likely to embrace the cloud to help them grow business and reduce IT-related capex,” said Stephen Elop, President, Microsoft Business Group.
Venkataraghavan SK, General Manager, Infrastructure Availability and Microsoft Business Unit, India and Middle East opined, “Indian consumers are well acquainted with the Microsoft interface and would be comfortable working with our online suite rather than a low-cost third-party product.”
The India launch of Microsoft’s SaaS offering also coincided with its announcement of significant reduction in subscription pricing of BPOS. The monthly subscription fee for the standard BPOS offering, which includes Exchange, SharePoint, Office Communications, and Office Live Meeting, has been slashed from $15 per user to $10. Microsoft has slashed the price of the standalone Exchange Online from $10 to $5 per user and boosted mailbox capacity from 5GB to 25GB.
Elop informed that Microsoft has enabled more than 100 partners in the country to sell Online Services.
Dismissing competition from Google, Elop said, “Google has only a few consumer services that are grouped together and offered like an enterprise offering. Microsoft Online Services, on the other hand are true enterprise class services.” |