Microsoft Office 365Customer Solution Case Study

IT Services Company Predicts 20% Cost Savings Over Three Years with Cloud Solution

OverviewCountry or Region: Europe and AsiaIndustry: IT Services

Customer ProfileFounded in 1969, Steria has offices in Europe, India, North Africa, and Southeast Asia, and 2012 revenues of €1.8 billion.

Business SituationSteria needed a consistent and cost-effective set of communication tools for better collaboration and faster decision making.

SolutionWith Microsoft Office 365, Steria’s employees can work collaboratively and communicate more effectively across all countries in the Group.

Benefits 20% TCO reduction over 3 years Better and more efficient business

decisions Connect to the right people at the

right time

With Office 365, we give to ourselves what we strive to deliver to clients: technology that empowers smart decisions and ongoing growth.

Christian Revelli, Group CIO, Steria

Headquartered in Paris, France, Steria applies its keen insight and expertise to help organizations drive their business transformation through working more efficiently and profitably with the right IT-enabled business solutions. With 20,000 employees dispersed across Europe, India, North Africa, and Southeast Asia, Steria supports a diverse range of clients, including the BBC, Deutsche Telekom, and several prominent European governments. Its prowess and support have earned the company accolades, and Steria is currently recognized as one of the top 10 IT services companies in Europe.

As the company grew, the challenges of aligning the technical platforms and keeping the workforce connected also grew. Steria’s leaders believed that turning to the cloud would address its concerns; however, they needed to ensure that the solution they chose aligned with their forward-thinking vision and provided optimal support. After evaluating multiple cloud services, Steria’s search ended when it discovered Microsoft Office 365.

SituationSteria’s 20,000 employees believed in the power of sharing, but not everyone used the same tools to work together. For example, some users preferred to email files back and forth while others opted to use the organization’s Lotus Notes server to exchange documents. This made it difficult to stay organized and coordinate projects, and was exacerbated by the fact that remote workers lacked access to critical files while on the road or onsite in customers’ offices.

“Making the best decisions depends on getting the right information as quickly as possible,” says Christian Revelli, Group CIO of Steria. “We needed to improve the way we managed shared information and worked collaboratively.” Company leaders knew that more effective use of instant messaging could reduce time wasted sending email messages to employees not at their desks. “A dispersed workforce has its advantages, but this can become a hindrance when you need an immediate answer to a business-critical question,” notes C. Revelli. The absence of a consistent set of tools and applications frustrated Steria employees, and hampered their ability to quickly make and act on decisions. Steria executives had looked at other cloud-based services out there, including Google Apps and IBM Lotus Live, but they were also aware of the need for a major shift in the company’s IT operations. In particular, they wanted to ensure that both IT staff and employees throughout the company were prepared for the transition.

As C. Revelli explains, “What we found is that many of the cloud services out there don’t come with the support we needed to transition our IT in the timeframe we needed.”

SolutionThen, C. Revelli discovered Cloud Vantage Services for Microsoft Office 365, an enterprise services offering that combines strategy, consulting, and support delivered by a seasoned Microsoft cloud specialist as a single point of contact. “The commitment of Microsoft to help us be successful in a specific timeframe through Cloud Vantage—along with the familiar set of Microsoft tools and applications in Office 365—made it clear this was the right solution for us,” he says. “We didn’t select Microsoft to help just with the transition to the cloud. We chose them to help us grow our business through this kind of ongoing partnership.”

Microsoft Office 365 unites familiar Microsoft Office applications with the power of Microsoft productivity servers into one connected, online solution. The service includes Microsoft Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and Lync Online. With Exchange Online, users can read and reply to email, check calendars, and find important contacts from their desktops or mobile devices. SharePoint Online facilitates anywhere access to critical information through Team Communities where employees can find important documents and people, participate in discussion forums, and access routine business processes. And with Lync Online, employees can initiate instant online meetings and conference calls, as well as video conferences through the cloud, and send and receive instant messages.

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BenefitsC. Revelli expects that once fully deployed, Office 365 will help Steria’s employees communicate in ways they never thought possible. “Moving from disparate services to a centralized one will undoubtedly improve the way we work together—and with our clients,” he says.

Better connectedRegardless of where they are, Steria employees will be able to access important documents through SharePoint Online. Instant messaging capabilities via Lync Online will also help employees address important issues faster than before. C. Revelli notes: “With Lync Online, people can immediately determine if colleagues are available and at their desks. That’s something we never had before, and it will definitely reduce time spent sending unnecessary emails to someone out of the office.”

He continues, “Immediate access to information—and each other—does more than save time,” says C Revelli “It empowers us to make better decisions for our business and our customers.”

Significant savingsBecause Office 365 provides hosted email, file sharing capabilities, and conferencing features, Steria will no longer have to allocate time and resources to managing disparate solutions. “Bringing everything we need into one, unified cloud solution will certainly alleviate the burden on our IT professionals,” says C Revelli “We won’t need to allocate funds to on-premises server upkeep, or invest in the latest

software upgrades for each user. Thus, we estimate a 20 percent reduction in our total cost of ownership through Office 365 over three years.”

Growth opportunitiesRevelli expects that Office 365 will further fuel Steria’s success. “With Office 365, we give to ourselves what we strive to deliver to clients: technology that empowers smart decisions and ongoing growth,” he says. As a company that prides itself on helping customers find the best IT decisions for their businesses, Steria believes it can expand its innovative offerings to even more clients by including Office 365 as a potential solution. “People demand the best products for their business, and Office 365 is emblematic of the superior offerings we can deliver.”

In conclusion, though C. Revelli is still assessing the full impact Office 365 will have on the organization, he’s confident that providing employees with new ways to communicate will increase productivity—and ultimately improve the company’s bottom line.“Having a consistent interface and a complete package of communication tools—from sharing files to conducting video chats—makes it easier for employees to be confident and successful,” he says. “And as we all know, happier employees make for better business results.”

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Microsoft Office 365Microsoft Office 365 brings together cloud versions of our most trusted communications and collaboration products—Microsoft SharePoint Online, Exchange Online, and Lync Online—with the latest version of our Office desktop suite and companion web applications for businesses of all sizes.

Office 365 helps save time and money, and it frees up valued resources. Simple to use and easy to administer, it is financially backed by a service level agreement guaranteeing 99 percent reliability. Office 365 features robust security, IT-level phone support, geo-redundancy, disaster recovery, and the business-class privacy controls and standards that you expect from a world-class service provider.

For more information about Microsoft Office 365, go to:www.office365.com

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For More InformationFor more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers in the United States and Canada who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:www.microsoft.com

For more information about Steria products and services, call or visit the website at: www.steria.com

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Document published November 2012

Software and ServicesMicrosoft Office 365 Microsoft SharePoint Online Microsoft Lync Online Microsoft Exchange Online

Microsoft Services and Support Cloud Vantage Services