du and Microsoft have announced a new partnership, under which du will become the first telecom service provider in the UAE to offer Office 365 cloud-based productivity applications and services directly to its small and medium business (SMB) customers in the country.
This announcement leads to the availability of office on the cloud to be provided by a telecom service provider for the first time in the UAE by further expanding the various channels available to SMBs to obtain Office 365, and provides additional value-added services that complement the offering.
The Office 365-enabled packages introduced support the services offered by du for SMBs, allowing them to now be able to purchase all the services they require from one supplier, through one support center, and in one consolidated monthly bill. Microsoft Office 365 packages are offered by du across all their mobile, device and broadband portfolio from as low as 20 AED/month, added to the customer’s du monthly bill. The offering also provides a simple and easy on-boarding for customers to start using the Office 365, as well as providing a choice of support packages giving the customer complete peace of mind while he focuses on running his core business.
The Office 365 business plan packages to be provided by du offer a variety of services, including business-class email, shared calendars, instant messaging, conferencing, and access to 1TB of storage in the cloud, which is due to become unlimited over the course of 2015. This is all in addition to the Microsoft Office suite. SMBs can benefit from Office 365-hosted solutions with no infrastructure setup or costs on up to 15 devices per user with any operating system, and remain productive on the go without having to pay any IT infrastructure costs.
SMBs represent the fastest growing segment for us, and we believe that this segment has huge potential for growth. We completely understand the needs and challenges of SMBs, and from our experience we have seen that they are early technology adopters, if products are packaged right. By offering the Office 365 suite of packages across all our core mobile and broadband services through our new collaboration with Microsoft, our SMB customers will benefit from yet another incredible effort to bring value-packed, enterprise-grade solutions to this market. We are excited to launch the UAE’s first modern office in the cloud, Said Hany Fahmy Aly, Executive Vice President, Enterprise Business, du.
Office 365 is one of the fastest growing businesses in Microsoft history. Microsoft recently increased the amount of cloud storage that it provides to Office 365 accounts to 1 terabyte across the service, bringing more capacity to anyone who pays for Office.
More information can be found on www.du.ae/office365.
