Good article about Coca Cola Enterprises choosing MIcrosoft’s Business Productivilty Online Suite and therewith replacing Lotus Notes / Domino based email system and extranet :
Coca-Cola Enterprises, Coke’s largest bottling company, has faced seesawing fortunes in recent years, from a $1.1 billion loss in 2006 to a $711 million gain last year to lowered profit forecasts for this year, forcing changes across the business. In IT, one of the most visible is the company becoming Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT)’s largest software-as-a-service customer to date, contracting for 35,000 employees to get their e-mail and other collaboration capabilities via a subscription service.
By later this year, most of the 35,000 knowledge workers at Coca-Cola Enterprises, known as CCE, will have moved from IBM (NYSE: IBM) Lotus Notes to Microsoft Outlook with Exchange Online, the SaaS version of Microsoft’s e-mail server. It’s the first piece of a larger move to Microsoft collaboration tools that CCE hopes will bring the company the ease of management and the consistent user experience of an integrated suite. The switch to a hosted model, which will take place over the next year, also will include SharePoint Online for ad hoc team collaboration and content management, Live Meeting for Web conferencing, and Office Communications Server Online for unified communications.
Up till now, CCE’s collaboration strategy has used nonintegrated tools. There was an IBM-based extranet managed partially by a service provider, Lotus Notes for e-mail, a legacy intranet, and a separate Web conferencing tool. "We were missing the mark," says John Key, CCE’s senior manager for collaboration.
When the new system’s in place, executives will be able to broadcast live video to all of the company’s knowledge workers. Employees will be able to schedule Live Meeting Web conferences through Outlook, or take a chat session in the Office Communicator instant messaging tool and turn it into a phone call. A new intranet based on SharePoint will include industry news, video and audio content, executive blogs, and employee polls.
Continue at Source: InformationWeek
