Technology giant Microsoft Corporation has officially launched its next generation cloud computing suite, Office365, in Nigeria’s capital Abuja.
Microsoft Nigeria’s country manager Emmanuel Onyeje said Office 365 is a next generation cloud tecnology that will best service various businesses within and outside Nigeria.
He stated that although the company is just launching the product in Nigeria, Office 365 has been made available in the Nigerian IT market since June.
The product has served thousands of Nigerian businesses and the company is now expanding its reach to businesses of all sizes, he said.
The expansion, Microsoft said, is in line with the current trend in global technology – an evolution from the information age to the collaboration age.
“This evolution will give Nigerian businesses the capacity to take action on shared information. The launch of Microsoft Office 365 in Nigeria will accelerate that evolution by delivering enterprise grade collaboration for all businesses – large and small,” Onyeje said.
Concerning what the West African sub-region would benefit from Office 365, the leader of Microsoft Africa’s Information Worker Business Group, Mark Israel, described Office 365 as capable of driving business growth and facilitating economic transformation throughout the West African sub-region.
These, he said, could be achieved by the provision of information technology that ensures flexible access, is cost effective and strong enough to be the continent’s backbone for 21st century businesses.
In his remark, Abiodun Atobatele who is the chief technology officer of ATB TechSoft Solutions, a company that has migrated to Office 365, highlighted the simple nature of the cloud interface saying it does not even “require that companies should employ someone who is specially trained.”
Office 365 is entirely based on productivity tools that everyday computer users are already familiar with including Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Access, Microsoft OneNote, Microsoft Excel and several others, Atobatele noted.
“After thoroughly evaluating other cloud services, we concluded that Microsoft’s Office 365 is the best for us. With Office 365, we’ve gotten the added benefit of working together with familiar tools on almost any device and we can now make quicker decisions when needed,” Abiodun added.
