Office 365 news at WPC 2016

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Today, I had the privilege of taking the stage in Toronto for our annual Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) to talk about Office 365 momentum and the opportunity we have together with our partners. With their help, after five years in market, Office 365 is now empowering over 70 million people each month in companies of all sizes. Together, Microsoft and our partners can help our mutual customers empower their employees through digital transformation.



Facebook likes Office 365

Today, we announced that Facebook has chosen Office 365. CIO Tim Campos joined me on stage at WPC to outline Facebook’s confidence in Office 365 as the best tool to empower their 13,000 employees to accomplish as much as they possibly can each day. This supports Facebook’s ongoing mission to make the world more open and connected for their user base of over one billion people. Facebook joins Cushman and Wakefield, Atkins and countless other organizations relying on Office 365 and its intelligent, secure services to enable a digital workplace.

All of this momentum would not be possible without the help of our partners, who play an essential role in empowering organizations around the world by delivering the latest enterprise value in Office 365. This is one reason why we continue to invest in their success and build great offerings.

Skype for Business provides more opportunity for partner success

Today, we introduced a new set of resources to help partners unlock the opportunity around Office 365, the Skype Operations Framework (SOF)—an end-to-end planning, deployment and operations methodology for Skype for Business. SOF provides partners a comprehensive guide and toolset for implementing and managing a reliable, cost-effective communications service with Skype in the cloud. It can help partners drive operational excellence and high quality deployments. Partners like Modality are already using this framework to expand their Skype for Business offerings beyond on-premises deployments to managed services.

We also are continuing to expand the global footprint of Skype for Business PSTN services. PSTN Conferencing is now available to customers in 92 countries including Venezuela, Uruguay, Vietnam and Kenya added this month. In addition, PSTN Calling is now available in both the UK and U.S., providing inbound and outbound calling, voicemail, phone numbers and calling plans.

Lastly, we’re excited to announce that Office 365 customers will be getting a preview of automatic transcription and translation in Skype Meeting Broadcast by the end of 2016. Skype Meeting Broadcast lets you produce, host and broadcast meetings to large online audiences. These new services will provide live closed captioning of presentations and allow viewers to choose translation into their preferred language from a list of supported languages.



Office recognized by AIG for security and compliance strength

One of the reasons so many customers have chosen Office 365 is that we’re built on a platform of trust. In light of our industry-leading security and compliance capabilities, Office 365 and the Microsoft Cloud are being recognized by AIG, which will now include a Microsoft Cloud endorsement with its CyberEdge insurance policy. Microsoft is the first cloud vendor to achieve this status with AIG. This endorsement allows new or renewing AIG CyberEdge customers using Microsoft Azure, Office 365 or Dynamics 365 to have access to expanded business interruption coverage as part of their policy terms.

“We’ve worked closely with Microsoft to assess the security and compliance capabilities of the Microsoft Cloud,” said Tracie Grella, global head of Cyber Risk at AIG. “We’re impressed and excited to offer this unique endorsement to our joint customers.”

Office 365 Education offerings now available in CSP

We are pleased to announce that Office 365 Education plans are now available in the Cloud Solution Provider Program (CSP), adding yet another Office 365 offering that partners can bundle with their own services, while continuing to own the customer relationship end-to-end.

Let’s achieve more together!

Now is a better time than ever for partners to grow their businesses with Office 365. Partners can win new customers and add value by building practices, delivering services and bundling solutions around our new advanced services. Partners working with Microsoft have a $120 billion managed services and solutions opportunity over three years. Office 365 is core to our ambition of reinventing productivity. This would not be possible without our partners and their dedication to our platform. We appreciate your partnership and thanks for a great WPC!



—Kirk Koenigsbauer

Source: Office 365 news at WPC 2016 - Office Blogs