Tag: Microsoft Office 365

As Microsoft strives to support the digital transformation of organizations and enterprises around the world, we continue to drive innovation and expand into new geographies to empower more customers with Office 365, the world’s leading cloud-based productivity solution, with more than 180 million commercial monthly active users. Today, we’re taking another step in our ongoing investment to help enable digital transformation and societal impact across Africa with the general availability of Office 365 services from our new cloud datacenters in South Africa.

Office 365, delivered from local datacenters in South Africa, helps our customers enable the modern workplace and empower their employees with real-time collaboration and cloud-powered intelligence while maintaining security, compliance, and in-country customer data residency. The addition of South Africa as a new geography for Office 365 increases the options for secure, cloud productivity services combined with customer data residency in 16 geographies across the globe along with three additional geographies also announced.

In-country data residency for core customer data helps Office 365 customers meet regulatory requirements, which is particularly important and relevant in industries such as healthcare, financial services, and government—where organizations need to keep specific data in-country to comply with local requirements. Customer data residency provides additional assurances regarding data privacy and reliability for organizations and enterprises. Core customer data is stored only in their datacenter geography (Geo)—in this case, the cloud datacenters within South Africa.

Customers like Altron and the Gauteng Provincial Government have used Office 365 to transform their workplaces. This latest development will enable them—and other organizations and enterprises adopting Office 365—to ramp up their digital transformation journey.

“Altron is committed to improving our infrastructure and embracing a strategy to become a cloud-first company to better serve our customers and empower our employees through modern collaboration. We’ve noticed a tangible difference since making the move to Office 365.”
—Debra Marais, Lead, IT Shared Services at Altron

“Office 365 is driving our modernization journey of Government ICT infrastructure and services by allowing us to develop pioneering solutions at manageable costs and create overall improvements in operations management, all while improving transparency and accountability.”
—David Kramer, Deputy Director General, ICT at Gauteng Provincial Government

Microsoft recently became the first global provider to deliver cloud services from the African continent with the opening of our new cloud datacenter regions. Office 365 joins Azure to expand the intelligent cloud service available from Africa. Dynamics 365 and Power Platform, the next generation of intelligent business applications, are anticipated to be available in the fourth quarter of 2019.

By delivering the comprehensive Microsoft cloud—which includes Azure, Office 365, and Dynamics 365—from datacenters in a given geography, we offer scalable, available, and resilient cloud services to companies and organizations while meeting customer data residency, security, and compliance needs. We have deep expertise in protecting data and empowering customers around the globe to meet extensive security and privacy requirements, including offering the broadest set of compliance certifications and attestations in the industry.

The new cloud regions in South Africa are connected to Microsoft’s other regions via our global network, one of the largest and most innovative on the planet—spanning more than 100,000 miles (161,000 kilometers) of terrestrial fiber and subsea cable systems to deliver services to customers. Microsoft is bringing the global cloud closer to home for African organizations and citizens through our trans-Arabian paths between India and Europe, as well as our trans-Atlantic systems, including Marea, the highest capacity cable to ever cross the Atlantic.

We’re committed to accelerating digital transformation across the continent through numerous initiatives and also recently announced Microsoft’s first Africa Development Centre (ADC), with two initial sites in Nairobi, Kenya and Lagos, Nigeria. The ADC will serve as a premier center of engineering for Microsoft, where world-class African talent can create solutions for local and global impact. With our new cloud datacenter regions, the ADC, and programs like 4Afrika, we believe Africa is poised to develop locally and scale for global impact better than ever before.

Learn more about Office 365 and Microsoft in the Middle East and Africa.

Today’s post was written by Amel Hammouda, chief transformation officer at Air France and a member of the Air France executive committee.

Whether they’re traveling overseas for business, taking a chance on a whirlwind romance, or reuniting with old friends, passengers count on Air France to deliver an exceptional customer experience on their journeys. Every year, Air France flies upwards of 87.3 million passengers to hundreds of destinations around the world. While we are internationally recognized for the lengths we go for our customers, we are equally committed to making sure our employees have a great experience on the job.

In fact, we see a direct correlation between empowered employees and satisfied customers. This idea drives our strategic business plan, which aims to foster an innovative mindset for the benefit of our customers and our employees. This means ensuring that our employees have the right tools to contribute their ideas and enthusiasm—from unique ways to present in-flight meals to project management on an international scale. We’re building a modern, mobile workplace with Microsoft Office 365, so we can tap into the enthusiasm of our dynamic, engaged employees. Continuing to innovate great customer service will help us maintain our advantage in today’s competitive airline industry.

It’s often said that you never know who you might meet on an airplane, and this spirit of potential is also at the core of our corporate culture. As we continue to build on a culture of innovation, we know that game-changing ideas can come from anywhere in the business. With Office 365, we have tools to break down silos and leverage our collective brainpower. More than 46,000 employees use the Yammer corporate social network to share their ideas and innovate through improved collaboration for the benefit of our customers. Many of our most successful Yammer initiatives have been entirely grassroots, like the viral “I Love My Job” project that started with a single flight attendant using Yammer to share pictures and stories about her job. This grew into an incredible network of Firstline Workers who use Yammer to share best practices, tips, and tricks—innovations that we can use to take customer service to the next level.

Consistency and accuracy occur naturally in a well-connected workforce. With our cloud-based communication tools taking off in the company, it is easier for Air France employees to provide accurate answers to customers’ questions, and even anticipate their needs. The more knowledge we share across the company, the more unified we are in our approach to service, and the more reliable we are in the eyes of our customers. Today, Air France is a more interconnected, productive organization because we have the technology to communicate and collaborate effortlessly.

Dynamic communication tools like Yammer don’t just improve employee connections, they also bring tangible business wins and help the focus remain on customers. The speed at which information can spread throughout the company translates to more agile decision-making and efficiency gains. Yammer was recently used by flight attendants who encountered a problem with snack packaging on a particular route. From posts across the company, it quickly became clear that flight attendants elsewhere noticed the same frustrating defect. Within 48 hours, Air France had negotiated a refund and replacement from the supplier—a win for both flight attendants and customers.

Air France operates a complex network of flights all over the globe; distributing information across our geographically dispersed enterprise can be equally complex. Working with intelligent communication applications like Microsoft Teams helps us to connect a mobile workforce that is always on the move. Our digital champions, employees who are passionate about promoting digital culture, use Skype for Business video calls to drive adoption of our new cloud tools. My team uses Microsoft SharePoint Online for document sharing and storage. I have seen firsthand how these tools can help us transcend department boundaries and drive projects across the company.

Our strategic priorities include two main lines of action: to continuously improve the customer experience and do the same for employees. Thanks to our modern, connected workplace, we are accelerating progress in both strategic directions and we expect great synergies over the next few years.

Read the case study to learn more about how Air France uses Office 365 to improve customer service and empower employees.