14 DAY TRIAL // Finnair, which is currently the number one airline in Finland and the fifth oldest in the world, has decided to switch to Office 365, seeking better communications, collaboration and productivity on the go.
In a press release published this morning, Microsoft says that Finnair has decided to abandon its email and file sharing servers for Office 365, picking this particular solution over similar products coming from Google.
Of course, Microsoft has used this new partnership to brag about Office 365, pointing out that it’s the perfect service for organizations that are trying to boost productivity in all departments.
In the case of Finnair, pilots, gate agents, mechanics, cabin crew, and office staff have easy access to secure email, as Office 365 automatically blocks spam and malware and, at the same time, keeps in the inbox protected against other threats.
Google Docs failed to meet expectations
According to Kari Hänninen, architect in Corporate Information Management for Finnair, his organization has already conducted a research to help choose the best solution for its needs, and after looking at Google Docs, it decided to go for Office 365.
Google Docs does not work well with Office documents, he says, and is even more expensive than Microsoft’s very own product.
“We ran a small pilot program of Google Docs, but Google doesn’t work well with Office, which all employees use, and its pricing model is not that great,” Hänninen explains.
“Microsoft had a far stronger federated enterprise solution, better support, a more convincing story around total cost and a more enterprise-ready, innovative solution.”
“We switched from Postini to Exchange Online Protection (EOP), the Office 365 spam filtering technology, in just one day,” Hänninen adds. “The EOP interface is familiar and easy to use and the filtering is excellent. We get rock-solid protection with financially backed service-level agreements. And because it’s part of Office 365, it’s more cost-effective to manage.”
Cost savings of about 15 percent
Choosing Office 365 also helps Finnair reduce costs in the long term, and according to initial estimates, the company could save a total of 15 percent of its investment in six years.
“With Office 365, we have eliminated recurring software upgrade costs and the extra cost of Postini,” Hänninen claims. “Over six years, Office 365 will be 15 percent less expensive than maintaining our own email servers. Plus, paying for software as a per-user fee makes it much easier to predict and budget.”
Needless to say, Microsoft surely needs this kind of agreements as the Office business has quickly become the company’s main cash cow which at the end of the day generates the biggest profit.