Microsoft Wins Best New Telecom Service in Leading Lights Awards 2011

Last night, senior leaders and influencers across the telecom industry gathered at the Hudson Terrace in New York City for Light Reading’s annual Leading Lights Awards.  The awards program focuses on next-generation communications technology, applications, and services, and rewards the companies that have performed well over the past year. The panel of judges included Light Reading editors and Heavy Reading and Pyramid Research analysts.

Microsoft was awarded Best New Service or Application (Telecom) for the June 2011 launch of Office 365 with telecom operators. Office 365 isMicrosoft’s next-generation productivity suite, available through more than 20 operators and hosters on four continents in June this year.

This award category focused on the company that has deployed a potentially market-leading, revenue-generating service or application that enhances the use of next-generation communications technology in the wireline network. Microsoft met the judges’ criteria for the way in which the company brought its flagship cloud service to market with operators around the world using the syndication model (whereby service provider partners can sell, bill, and support Office 365, bundled with their existing services and targeted at small and medium-sized businesses).

In September, Microsoft was named a finalist in this category alongside Orange Business Services, Apple Inc., KT Corp., XConnect, Sidera Networks Inc. and CENX Inc. 

Congratulations to the entire team involved in securing this prestigious award and a special thanks to all our operator partners who made this kind of industry recognition possible!