Microsoft has 'got its mojo back' with Office 365

Facebook unveiled as Office 365 customer and claims "Microsoft got cool again"

Microsoft has "got its mojo" back and as such "got cool again", according to Facebook, which announced at Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) that it is now an Office 365 customer.

During the Office keynote, and ahead of a segment led by Facebook's CIO Tim Campos, a video promoting Facebook's new status as an Office 365 ran, during which, the vendor said:

"Do you really want to know the reason we picked Office 365? It's because of Microsoft. Microsoft got cool again."

Elaborating on the comments in his speech, Campos said Microsoft was chosen because its products matched Facebook's mission to be bold and be fast.

"Collaboration and technology in general is evolving," he said. "Our workforce expects to be on the latest and most innovative technology and collaboration patterns are changing with this. Employees shift from using email to other things, and we need good partnership from industry leaders. And in this, we're really happy to see Microsoft got its mojo back. We're not just buying Office 365 for what it can do today, it's for what Microsoft will bring tomorrow. We have great expectations."

Speaking to CRN after the keynote, Microsoft's general manager for Office 365 Giovanni Mezgec said what he took from Campos' presentation was that Facebook was impressed with Microsoft's approach to productivity.

"I think they're saying they like the innovation we're providing," he said. "I think if you heard what Tim said, he talked about the fact Facebook uses email and there's a lot of information in the company. He talks about how he loves Delve and Microsoft graphs. He said [we] are innovating every month with new features and new things he can do."

When asked directly if he felt Microsoft ever lost its mojo, or was not "cool", Mezgec said: "I have never felt that personally."

Throughout WPC, Microsoft announced a number of technical updates to Office 365, a product which has been around for five years and has 70 million active users each month.

Richard Ellis, Microsoft UK's Office lead, gave CRN an overview of where the product was up to in terms of updates in the UK.

"We've already launched our cloud PBX service and we launched PSTN conference calling services. We launched our PSTN calling plans," he said. "You can have end-to-end voice services directly in the cloud with Office 365. They're available as standalone SKUs to buy or as part of the E5 suite. There's a real interesting in cloud telephony and cloud voice."