Sprint Newsroom: Businesses Can Collaborate and Communicate More Easily With Microsoft Office 365 Offered by Sprint

Sprint Nextel Corporation has posted the following release to its Newsroom website:

Businesses Can Collaborate and Communicate More Easily With Microsoft Office 365 Offered by Sprint

OVERLAND PARK, Kan. (BUSINESS WIRE), April 18, 2013 - Enhancements to cloud-enabled Microsoft Office 365 offered by Sprint (NYSE: S) will make it even easier for small to mid-sized businesses (SMBs) to collaborate and communicate from virtually anywhere they are, whether in the office or on the go.

The variety of plans available from Sprint has expanded to offer more choice and flexibility, and several new a la carte options also are available. As with previous plans, businesses enjoy predictable monthly costs with no up-front infrastructure expenses, pay-as-you-go plans and savings by bundling all of the necessary tools, all with a single bill and single point of contact. The new plans include:

• Sprint Professional Plus with Office 365 – This new package provides all the cloud-based components of the Office 365 Professional plan AND the downloadable version of Office 2013 (called Office 365 ProPlus). Office 365 ProPlus includes the most popular version of desktop applications, such as Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote.
• Sprint Preferred with Office 365 – Combines the most commonly used Active Directory and IT policy management capabilities of the Enterprise plan with Office 365 ProPlus.
• 20 stand-alone or add-on products for Office 365 are now available from Sprint. These products provide optimum solutions to address customer needs, including Exchange Online Plan 1 and 2 and new Kiosk plans.

Coming soon to Office 365 plans is Sprint Audio Conferencing for Lync™ Online, powered by InterCall, which provides businesses an enhanced Lync™ conferencing experience to drive closer collaboration with internal and external teams. Options include adding 10, 25 or 50 dial-in attendees by phone with existing Lync™ Online conferencing capabilities. Benefits also include Carefree Cloud assistance through the entire Sprint Audio Conferencing setup process, including synchronization with Lync™ Online for immediate productivity gain.

SMBs also now can purchase Office 365 offered by Sprint in Sprint Consultation Centers located at select Sprint retail stores.

"We've seen strong demand for our Office 365 plans, and our unique Carefree Cloud support clearly is breaking down barriers to cloud adoption by helping to simplify the purchase and onboarding process for businesses," said John Dupree, senior vice president of business sales, Sprint. "We felt it was critical to build on this successful model by expanding our offers in order to meet the distinct needs of SMBs within a variety of industries and work styles."

Frost & Sullivan recently recognized strong value of Office 365 offered by Sprint

Sprint received the 2012 North American Customer Value Enhancement Award in Mobile Communications and Collaboration from Frost and Sullivan for its Office 365 offer.

According to this year's annual survey conducted by Frost & Sullivan of mobile and wireless decision-makers in North America, smaller business respondents cite the cost of doing business, post-sale service and support capability, and professional services capabilities as the top factors they consider when selecting potential mobility partners.

Office 365 offered by Sprint includes unique Carefree Cloud "white glove" migration and onboarding assistance, 24x7 support, online resources and a user-friendly portal to manage the services. Carefree Cloud is available with all Office 365 plans offered by Sprint at no additional charge (the onboarding and migration services portion of Carefree Cloud is provided at no additional charge when used within the first 90 days of purchase) to all employees within a business so companies have the flexibility to receive the level of migration and ongoing support they need.

For more details and resources about Office 365 offered by Sprint, including further analysis from Frost & Sullivan, visit www.sprint.com/office365.

A comprehensive approach to cloud

The key to Sprint's cloud strategy is teaming with leaders in software and cloud computing while enhancing the services with seamless integration of mobility for virtually anytime, anywhere access from any device. With reliable, secure connectivity over Sprint's network via 3G, 4G and all-IP Global MPLS technologies, businesses of all sizes can confidently embrace a variety of hosted services to improve their productivity and cost structures.

Sprint offers a wide variety of cloud-based solutions in addition to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) with Office 365 including Unified-Communications-as-a-Service (UCaaS) with Sprint Complete Collaboration and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) to be launched in the coming months. Sprint also delivers an innovative private-label cloud services platform to wholesale customers, enabling them to quickly deliver simple and affordable brand-name software services to SMBs.

Sprint Network Leadership

The Network Vision initiative is designed to enhance customers' network experience with faster data speeds, improved voice quality and easier connectivity. Sprint expects to be mostly complete with Network Vision by the end of 2013.

About Sprint Nextel

Sprint Nextel offers a comprehensive range of wireless and wireline communications services bringing the freedom of mobility to consumers, businesses and government users. Sprint Nextel served more than 55 million customers at the end of 2012 and is widely recognized for developing, engineering and deploying innovative technologies, including the first wireless 4G service from a national carrier in the United States; offering industry-leading mobile data services, leading prepaid brands including Virgin Mobile USA, Boost Mobile, and Assurance Wireless; instant national and international push-to-talk capabilities; and a global Tier 1 Internet backbone. The American Customer Satisfaction Index rated Sprint No. 1 among all national carriers in customer satisfaction and most improved, across all 47 industries, during the last four years. Newsweek ranked Sprint No. 3 in both its 2011 and 2012 Green Rankings, listing it as one of the nation's greenest companies, the highest of any telecommunications company. You can learn more and visit Sprint at www.sprint.com or www.facebook.com/sprint and www.twitter.com/sprint.

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