Telstra extends partnership with Microsoft in Australia

Australian telco, Telstra, announced today that they would be extending their partnership with Microsoft. Telstra’s director of global applications, Gianpaolo Carraro, said in a statement that one of the motivators for the continuing relationship was Microsoft’s impressive productivity and collaboration services which work well with their own networks, mobility, and enterprise technologies. The renewed agreement will bear fruit almost immediately with a new initiative for Australian businesses that will further integrate Microsoft’s Office 365 and Skype for Business solutions into the workforce.

“The partnership means Australian businesses can have the full scope of Office 365 cloud productivity and collaboration apps, video conferencing and meeting broadcast capabilities, along with Telstra voice services into Cloud-PBX delivered either in the cloud or at a customers’ premise,” he revealed. “Skype for Business (Microsoft’s meetings and voice communications offering in Office 365) will be paired with Telstra managed voice services and network assessments to deliver a comprehensive productivity and collaboration solution. With these enhanced capabilities, Australian businesses will benefit from the increased productivity of a truly mobilised workforce, where employees have the ability to work anywhere, anytime and on any device.”

Carraro acknowledges the difficulties in implementing new strategies on a scale as large as this and mentions that Telstra would be incorporating Kloud and Readify services during the transition period. “We know that adopting new applications can be a complex process, especially when each of our customers’ have their own unique requirements. So this new capability will be backed by Telstra’s professional consulting capabilities through recent acquisitions of Kloud and Readify to support them as they embark on this technology journey,” Carraro enthuses. “We can be on hand to help assess, design, customise, implement and manage new applications right across an IT environment. We can also make the digital transformation journey easier by providing solutions and offers that are scalable, flexible and of course secure.”

Telstra is Australia’s largest telecommunications provider and has a strong history of working with Microsoft. The company actually hired former Microsoft exec, Stephen Elop back in March of this year and the revamp of the Sydney and Melbourne flagship Telstra stores were heavily influenced by Microsoft technology and the Windows 10 operating system in particular.