Office 365’s cloud connected nature has seen Microsoft’s productivity suite expand to various usage scenarios beyond previous iterations of Office. Schools are utilizing tools such as OneNote and OneDrive in much broader communicative use-cases between teachers and students. Enterprise customers are using the cloud sync options to foster better collaborations while keeping the flow of information up to the minute. Office 365’s cloud first approach enables much-needed scalability for uses that range from a single person licenses to government contract deployments.
Over the past year, we’ve been reporting on the broad swath of success stories piling up at Office 365’s adoption doorstep. A recent agreement between the U.S. Air Force and the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) will add yet another story of Office 365 adoption and deployment to a quickly growing list. The U.S. Air Force has entered into a partnership with the DLA to award more than 100,000 seats of the Department of Defense dedicated version of Microsoft Office 365 to Microsoft, Dell and General Dynamics.
According to Microsoft senior director Leigh Madden, this agreement signals one of the largest commercial cloud contracts the DoD has issued in its history. Leigh has specialized insights into how the contract will specifically benefit the parties involved, as he heads up Microsoft’s U.S. Air Force business unit. The Department of Defense is looking to Office 365 to help the Air Force and DLA significantly reduce cost over the next three years. According to Leigh, using Office 365 is “helping the agency communicate more easily across active, civilian, and reserve personnel and move toward a consolidated mobile and messaging platform.” The contract will take effect during the next government fiscal year and will enable the Air Force access to secure email, calendaring, Office Web Applications, Skype for Business as well as other collaborative tools.
The use of Office 365 was under careful consideration and ultimately chosen as it aligns with the Air Force’s commitment to building a successful DoD Enterprise Email initiative. In addition to further encouraging the Air Forces initiative, Office 365 will also be supporting the DoD’s unique security requirements and best practices.
The recent DoD contract is yet another example of Microsoft’s cloud-first and secure Office suite meeting the ever-expanding demands of users big and small.