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Hot on the heels of the inaugural entry in my new series of articles about Office 365, Microsoft announced today that three major new customers have signed up for the enterprise version of the online productivity service. JetBlue, Patagonia, and the American Heart Association have all joined Office 365.
(I wasn't previously aware of the timing of today's Office 365 blog post.)
"We always feel terrific when new customers join the Office 365 family," Microsoft notes in a post to its Office 365 Blog. "These companies are now part of an illustrious group as over 40% of the Interbrand Top 100 global brands use Microsoft’s cloud productivity services."
The three join Campbell Soup Company, Marie Claire, Roush Enterprises, Hersing Corp, UL (formerly Underwriters Labs), Wunderman and many others in eschewing old-school, on-premise-only and competing solutions, Microsoft says.
Interestingly, Microsoft reiterates a fact that I also noted my earlier article, that 90 percent of its Office 365 customers have less than 50 employees. This is a key way in which Microsoft identifies small businesses, but as today's announcement makes clear, Office 365 is being adopted by businesses of all sizes.
"We're targeting small businesses, yes, but also medium-sized businesses and the enterprise," Microsoft's Tom Rizzo told me in an earlier briefing. "Small and big, we're winning lots of customers. And many are coming from Google."
The Microsoft blog post cites a few ways in which each company is beneftting from Office 365. Patagonia, for example, expects to save $300,000 in future upgrades and infrastructure upgrades, and another $15,000 a year in savings by moving to cloud-based e-mail.
