Microsoft and Etisalat have signed a global framework agreement to enable the telco’s operations across 15 countries to leverage the power of the Microsoft platform; enhancing productivity and driving operational excellence based on a Mobile First, Cloud First strategy.

With operations across 3 continents, the agreement will enable Etisalat to leverage the unique offering of Office 365 to provide enterprise grade social networking and collaboration tools such as Yammer, Lync and SharePoint to reduce communication barriers across the group, enhance information sharing, transfer knowledge and drive market agility.

Speaking at the signing of the agreement, Samer Abu Ltaif, General Manager, Microsoft Gulf said: “At Microsoft, we are obsessed with providing our customers with technology innovation that enables them to be more productive in a mobile-first, cloud-first world. We are honored to work with Etisalat on such a global scale to leverage the power of Microsoft communication and collaboration tools which have been designed to assist large and small business enterprises reduce the complexity and costs associated with running their businesses. Through tools such as Office 365, Lync and SharePoint, time will be saved and significant value will be added to business with an efficient IT deployment”

Commenting on the agreement, Hatem Bamatraf, Chief Technology Officer of Etisalat Group said in a statement that the “collaboration with Microsoft is an important one, that we believe will improve our ability to communicate across multiple markets, share information and best practice effectively, and standardize performance across all geographies. With unique collaboration and social networking tools from Microsoft, we can better empower our employees with information anytime, anywhere across any platform to provide the best in class experience for our customers”.

Microsoft’s Yammer is a cloud based enterprise social network tool accessible only within its global organization. Yammer will enable Etisalat employees to connect, find and share information.

Microsoft Lync is an enterprise-ready unified communications platform. Lync connects people everywhere, on Windows and other operating systems including mobile devices, as part of their everyday productivity experience. Lync provides a consistent, single client experience for presence, instant messaging, voice, video and a great meeting experience. Lync users can connect to anyone on Skype, enabling rich communication with hundreds of millions of people around the world.

SharePoint Server technology helps users manage and share personal documents and insights with colleagues, keep teams in sync with shared document libraries, task lists and calendars and stay up to date with company information and news.