Telecommunications giant Telefónica is to deploy Microsoft Office 365 and Yammer across its business to encourage collaboration and standardise the use of software among its 150,000-strong workforce.
Telefónica has a presence in 24 countries and in the UK is better known as mobile operator O2.
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In an exclusive interview with Computing, Telefónica group CIO Phil Jordan said the decision to deploy Office 365 was an obvious progression from a recent project that saw 140,000 staff migrate to a new global exchange platform.
"Having concluded a major programme to get everyone onto the same platform, it teed up the opportunity to go into the cloud. We're going with 3,500 seats to be live in the next few weeks, and then another 20,000 this year, and then we'll move the remaining 100,000 over a period of 18 months," he said.
A proof of concept was carried out last year, and Telefónica will initially deploy Microsoft 365 across Europe in April, followed by Latin America. Microsoft Cloud Vantage Services will assist in the migration process.
Jordan said that the switch to Microsoft Office 365 was a "bold move", as Telefónica had previously been a fairly segregated company. Office 365, he said, would enable the disparate companies to collaborate more and work as a global business.
The group CIO added that social enterprise collaboration tool Yammer and Microsoft's Lync unified communications system were major selling points.
"We reviewed other options and looked at alternative ways to get productivity products in the cloud. We're a big Microsoft shop and we heavily used Yammer before and that grew organically in the organisation in the last two years, so having the premier version available was important for us, while we also selected Lync as our future unified communications platform, so Microsoft was a straight forward choice for us," he said.
Yammer's integration of Microsoft Translator is also of benefit to Telefónica, according to Adrian Steel, European production hub lead and global director at Telefónica.
"With operations in 24 countries spanning eight languages, the ability to instantly translate conversations among our employees will be of tremendous benefit for Telefónica," he said.
Telefónica said that the deployment is expected to reduce the company's collaboration costs by at least 20 per cent.
"The majority of people are familiar with Microsoft products, so it is moving down the product roadmap," explained Jordan.
"I think going to the cloud gives us a lot more control, so rather than major on-premise or internal platform investment, our ability to grow our estate more dynamically is cost-effective and flexible and that is what we were looking for," he added.
Jordan said the transition to 365 will enable the company to get its employees standardised on the same versions of the same products.
"We're standardising on Windows 8, which is an ongoing evolution of our desktop environment, and we're bringing in a lot more touch devices as well," Jordan said.
