Poste Italiane aims at cloud computing with Office 365 tie up
Poste Italiane, the government-run postal service in Italy, has announced a deal with Microsoft Italy to integrate its digital document services with Microsoft's Office 365 subscription-based office software suite.
Under the deal, Poste Italiene will store clients' databases in its datacentre and offer digitalisation of all documents and archives (which will be stored remotely, and certified as legally valid).
The offer will be managed by Poste Italiene through its post office network. Poste Italiane entered the digital world in 2008 with the PEC — a certified email system and a legally valid way of sending electronic documents. It is a subscription-only service, which is now mandatory for all businesses.
Poste Italiane is also the largest postal services provider in the country, with 150,000 employees. Since the liberalisation of the postal sector it has seen a rise in competition, as private companies entered the profitable postal services.
As such, Poste Italiane has since been focusing on innovation over the past few years, offering digital services and modernising its infrastructure.
Other digital services, aimed at simplifying the bureaucratic hurdles (a constant effort for Italian companies), include digital signature and 'Legally Valid Electronic Records' a way of guaranteeing the validity of an electronic document over time.