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Innovation

Microsoft BPOS woos Freedom, Snooze

Microsoft and Telstra have convinced furniture specialist Steinhoff to dump its Lotus Notes installation and shift to the Telstra-branded version of Redmond's Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS).
Written by Renai LeMay, Contributor

Microsoft and Telstra have convinced furniture specialist Steinhoff to dump its Lotus Notes installation and shift to the Telstra-branded version of Redmond's Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS).

sofa1.jpg

(Shabby Chic Sofa image by Posh Living,
CC BY-SA 2.0)

Steinhoff operates the popular Freedom Furniture, Snooze and Bay Leather Republic brands, with a substantial presence in the Asia-Pacific region: 154 retail outlets and some 2500 employees.

A statement published this morning by Telstra, Microsoft and partner HubOne revealed that the company had bought some 1050 BPOS seats through Telstra's T-Suite portal. BPOS operates on a hosted model, with customers getting access to products such as Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint, Office Communications Server and Live Meeting through a web browser.

The company is believed to have been previously using IBM's Lotus Notes.

A total of 600 staff included in the deal will be limited in the feature set they receive, as they will receive collaboration tools through what Microsoft describes as its Exchange Online Deskless Worker tier. The others will have access to the full suite of BPOS tools.

HubOne will manage migration of Steinhoff's services to the cloud, with the company expecting the integration process to be complete by May.

"We are absolutely delighted to have played a part in this success," said HubOne managing director Nick Beaugeard. "Once again, this proves the viability of the new cloud computing business model for all industries, regardless of size or vertical focus".

The news comes as other large Australian organisations have dropped Lotus Notes.

In February last year, national airline Qantas confirmed it would ditch IBM's suite for Outlook, and others such as Coca-Cola Amatil and AMP have done the same.

Australian youth charity BoysTown has, however, remained with Lotus Notes and even upgraded the platform, citing the expandability of IBM's solution compared with that of rivals.

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