Hughes launches cloud services on MS platform

MUMBAI, INDIA: Hughes Communications India, Ltd. (HCIL), a provider of broadband satellite and managed network services on Wednesday announced that it has partnered with Microsoft to launch a subscription-based messaging and collaborative service built on Microsoft’s Communication Services platform for business customers.

As an integrated communications service, Hughes Productivity Services will offer end-to-end e-mailing solutions which promotes business messaging and collaboration, said a press release.

This service will eliminate users’ needs to invest in hardware, software licenses, security and related management costs by providing a 'pay-per mailbox' service model and includes hosted versions of Microsoft Exchange, Sharepoint, and Office Communications Server.

The company claimed that the customers will now have a cost-efficient enterprise class mailing solution without the hassle of infrastructure management and support and can rely on the service to deliver features such as active sync mobile devices integration, flexible mail box size, web calendaring facility, remote location archiving, and sender reputation filtering.

It enables integration with a company’s internal Microsoft network that also allows management of utilizing current IT tools and the provider’s portal based management system.

The Microsoft Communication Services works on a pay- as- you- go and zero investment model, thus providing enterprises and SMBs with a rich enterprise—class applications hosting platform without any up-front costs along with significant productivity benefits.

Shivaji Chatterjee, VP, Enterprise Business, HCIL said, “The demand for software as a service model among Indian enterprises and SMBs has grown many fold over last few years. We are proud to be the frontrunners in offering the Microsoft based messaging and collaboration software in India as a hosted model.”

Vikas Arora, group director, Enterprise Services Division, Microsoft India said, “The cloud is making access to enterprise class technology easy for businesses across the board. We are delighted to be supporting Hughes in their efforts to democratize enterprise technologies and making Microsoft’s popular messaging and collaboration tools accessible to a larger audience.

The key features of Microsoft Communication Services include fast, reliable and secure infrastructure consisting of redundant network connections, Premium anti spam and anti-virus, anywhere access, collaboration features like Group calendaring and scheduling, public e-mail folders, shared contacts, calendars and folders, message recovery and retention, Data back up and Archiving, added the release.