HP Enterprise Services and Microsoft Corp. today announced a global, four-year initiative to deliver Microsoft’s leading communications and collaboration applications via global private and public cloud services.

Under the agreement, HP and Microsoft will offer private and public cloud solutions designed to help organizations rapidly scale new users, shift IT resources from maintenance to innovation and change IT from a capital to operating expense. The solutions include the following:

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Private cloud: HP Enterprise Cloud Services – Messaging, HP Enterprise Cloud Services – Collaboration and HP Enterprise Cloud Services – Real-Time Collaboration deliver Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 and Microsoft Lync Server 2010 productivity applications as a service from HP datacenters around the world.
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Public cloud: Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft’s Office collaboration and productivity tools, will be delivered by Microsoft through the cloud.
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Hybrid solution: HP will resell Microsoft Office 365 with HP Enterprise Cloud Services – Messaging, HP Enterprise Cloud Services – Collaboration and HP Enterprise Cloud Services – Real-Time Collaboration.1
HP and Microsoft engineering resources will collaborate to deploy, support and enhance the new solutions. The solutions will launch globally, with initial availability this month in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States.

“Large organizations, particularly those in regulated industries like financial services and public sector, have demanding functionality and service level requirements,” said Brandt Faatz, vice president, Workplace Services, HP Enterprise Services. “HP and Microsoft help meet these needs with a flexible range of global, cost-efficient, cloud-based productivity solutions running on the latest technology.”

“Microsoft is committed to putting the unique and ever-evolving needs of customers at the core of cloud innovation,” said Mark Hill, vice president, Enterprise Partner Group, Microsoft. “This alliance with HP not only broadens Microsoft’s geographic reach, it gives customers maximum flexibility to choose a cloud computing solution that meets their organization’s specialized messaging and collaboration needs.”

HP and Microsoft have delivered technical innovation together for more than 25 years. They offer joint solutions that help organizations around the world improve services through the use of innovative technologies.

www.microsoft.com

“Today’s consumers are very clear in what they want: easy access to tightly integrated services and data on any device,” said Lee Williams, Senior Vice President in Nokia’s Devices software organization. “Nokia’s software strategy is based on cross-platform development environments, enabling the creation of rich applications across the Nokia device range. Nokia aims to support market leading and content rich internet application environments and to embrace and encourage open innovation. By working with Microsoft, we are creating terrific opportunities and additional choices for the development community, S60 licensees and the industry as a whole.”

Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering next-generation media experiences and rich interactive applications. Silverlight is already powering thousands of applications around the world and organizations including Entertainment Tonight, the NBA and NBC Universal to deliver superior Web-based experiences to their customers. The arrangement with Nokia will substantially extend the reach of Silverlight by making the platform available for hundreds of millions of devices, including S60 on Symbian smartphones from a range of manufacturers, as well as Nokia Series 40 devices and Nokia Internet tablets.

“This is an important relationship on so many levels. Working with Nokia means we are easily able to reach a huge number of mobile users, including customers of all S60 licensees. This is a significant step in gaining broad acceptance for Silverlight and ensuring it is platform agnostic. This is critical since we want to make sure developers and designers don’t have to constantly recreate the wheel and build different versions of applications and services for multiple operating systems, browsers and platforms,” said S. Somasegar, Senior Vice President of Microsoft’s Developer Division.

“There is clear market demand for rich, Web-based services across a variety of device types, but developing these can often be commercially difficult. For Microsoft this extends Silverlight to a broader range of vendors, platforms and devices. For Nokia it expands the web runtime options on its devices, enabling a wider community of developers and more applications. This should help the uptake of higher speed mobile services and advance a new era of anytime, anywhere device-based computing“, said Bola Rotibi , Principal Analyst at Ovum.

Microsoft will demonstrate Silverlight on S60 during the opening keyote at Microsoft’s MIX08 conference on March 5 in Las Vegas. Silverlight is intended to be available to S60 developers later this year with initial service delivery anticipated shortly thereafter for all S60 licensees. This will allow S60 application developers to use an even wider range of development environments for S60 on Symbian OS than today. Today S60 developers can use: C++ (using native Symbian OS APIs and Open C providing subset of standard POSIX libraries), S60 Web Run-time (supporting standards-based web technologies such as Ajax, JavaScript, CSS and HTML), the Java(TM) language, Flash Lite from Adobe, and Python.

Microsoft Silverlight availability for Nokia Series 40 devices and Nokia Internet tablets will be confirmed later.

Through this agreement, MTS and Microsoft will develop a road map for delivering innovative services to satisfy rising demand for data products and services throughout MTS’ markets. Initially, through MTS Connect, the company’s tariff class dedicated to data transfer and mobile Internet access, MTS and Microsoft plan to introduce Windows Vista-based notebook PCs, which offer built-in mobile broadband access, and make available to customers through a subscription payment model. At prices substantially less than current laptops with embedded 3G technologies, MTS will bring to market a best-in-class proposition featuring an innovative laptop design, a variety of tariff plans to address a wide array of users, customer service and support, and equipment fully tested and certified to meet MTS customers’ high expectations. The subscription PC program is expected to be available to MTS consumers in June 2008.

“Our engagement with Microsoft allows us to fulfill our brand promise of delivering more for our customers,” said Cynthia Gordon, Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer for MTS. “Customers of all types will be able to choose a bundled mobile broadband service at a price that fits their budget. The introduction of Microsoft’s innovative products will enable our customers to further create for themselves a unique customer experience.”

“Our co-operation with MTS represents a mutual desire to deliver the best in mobile services, whether that’s business users demanding mobile data services or consumers looking for the latest in connected communications and entertainment,” said Martha B?jar, corporate vice president for the Communications Sector at Microsoft. “The breadth of operator-enabled services that Microsoft has available today opens up a huge opportunity for MTS to deliver exciting experiences to their subscribers. And for Microsoft, MTS represents a significant channel to market for our software and services to give more people access to better mobile technology.”

MTS and Microsoft are focused on making mobile broadband PCs relevant, affordable and accessible to all MTS subscribers with the offering first planned for roll-out in metropolitan areas in Russia before extending to other countries across the region. This service offering follows Microsoft’s and MTS’ support of the GSMA mobile broadband computing initiative to drive adoption of mobile broadband services by mass-market PC buyers. It ensures subscribers can choose the right PC form factor, price, bundled services, and out-of-the-box experience that is best suited for their requirements, while facilitating truly ubiquitous PC connectivity.