Feeding America Adopts Microsoft’s Windows Phone Platform

Feeding America, the largest domestic hunger-relief charity in the United States, has announced plans to move to Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform and to leave the previously used BlackBerry solution aside.

Through this move, the organization expects to strengthen its capabilities and to complement the use of various other Microsoft products, including Microsoft Office 2010 and Microsoft Lync Server 2010.

Previously using BlackBerry devices, Feeding America has decided to test whether the use of another platform would prove better for it or not.

Thus, it explored a range of mobile environments, including Android, iPhone and Windows Phone, and it decided that Microsoft’s platform was the best solution for it.

Though making the move from BlackBerry to Windows Phone, the organization would register lower costs through cutting expenses for server maintenance.

At the same time, there were other benefits involved in the move, such as the reduction in cost per device by up to 24 percent, and better access to information and IT services that employees needed to stay productive.

“Windows Phone provides a level of integration with Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007 and Lync Server 2010 that are not available with the iPhone, iPad or Android,” said Kevin Lutz, vice president of Technology at Feeding America.

Moreover, the company notes that it was satisfied with the interoperability capabilities that Windows Phone sports when other Microsoft products are involved. The end-user experience was another aspect that impressed the organization.

“With Office Mobile built into Windows Phone, employees were able to be immediately productive,” said Andy Isztok, director of Service Delivery at Feeding America.

“The Office Hub in Windows Phone is great for quickly getting to PowerPoint presentations, Word documents and Excel spreadsheets — regardless of whether they’re stored on your phone or in the cloud on Windows Live SkyDrive.”

“More and more employees are also discovering Microsoft OneNote Mobile; they love how it uses Windows Live to give them access to their OneNote notebooks on their phones, on their PCs and on the Web,” Andy Isztok added.