BT has agreed to punt Microsoft’s online services to its business customers.

The UK telecoms giant confirmed it had inked a deal with Redmond today. Financial details of the agreement were kept secret.

The company plans to fold the software vendor’s product suite, which includes MS Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and MS Office Communications Online, into its 21CN network.

It will provide customers with a hosted-managed service that BT claimed would ensure “higher quality of service levels and guaranteed network performance”.

BT Global Services veep Neil Sutton also played the join-us-to-save-money card.

“This agreement enables BT and Microsoft to provide large organizations with fully integrated cloud-based business collaboration tools, while reducing their overall networked IT and infrastructure costs,” he said.

The firm added that customers could also use the services to build on existing legacy systems, while bolting on voice and data apps.

However, the deal with Microsoft doesn’t stretch to BT’s own Global Onevoice service - at least not yet. That will follow “later in the year”, said BT, without pinning down a specific date for when customers can expect to see that integration happen. ®

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