eircom and Microsoft today announced details of a new strategic partnership that will deliver a suite of advanced software and communication solutions to businesses across Ireland.

The alliance, an industry first in Ireland, will see the combination of Microsoft’s key business solutions for email (Microsoft Exchange), unified communications (Microsoft Office Communicator) and collaboration (Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services) with eircom’s broadband network to deliver software as a service on-demand to Irish businesses. The move will help SMEs to substantially reduce costs and increase productivity.

Uniquely, it will see eircom customers being able to buy their broadband service and their Microsoft software together and pay for it on a single bill. For many SME organisations, this simplifies access to these advanced capabilities and provides great flexibility in accessing new services.

Commenting on the partnership, Paul Donovan, CEO, eircom today said, "eircom is the leading provider of telecommunications in Ireland and we are committed to providing customers with a superior user experience. Together with Microsoft, we are bringing a new method of supplying solutions to the Irish market by delivering market-leading software over our next generation broadband network.

This is an exciting initiative that will bring together the best of world class products and services to the benefit of small and medium sized businesses and to the wider Irish technology industry. In the current economic climate, our customers are seeking affordable solutions to help increase sales and reduce costs. The broad range of services available under this alliance will enable customers to eradicate capital outlay and simply use the service without being IT experts – essentially, it will change the way many Irish businesses operate," continued Mr Donovan.

"We are excited to be working with eircom to deliver these services in a new way to the Irish market. A healthy indigenous small business community is vital to Ireland’s future economic success. It is important that we continue to look at new and innovative ways to deliver solutions to this community which will help them to work and grow in a cost effective and efficient manner. By giving SMEs easy access to the productivity tools that traditionally would only have been used by larger organisations is something that we believe will be an enabler for growth for small businesses across the country", commented Paul Rellis, Managing Director of Microsoft Ireland

 Products, Pricing and Availability

The products which are included are the core building blocks for business software for many SME’s – covering email (accessed either via a browser or using Microsoft Outlook), collaboration software (for document management, information sharing and portals) and customer relationship management solutions. The products which are available from launch are: