Microsoft wins 300,000-seat Office 365 deal with GE

Microsoft has scored one of its biggest-ever Office 365 wins, with more than 300,000 employees of global giant GE moving to the cloud software.

GE staff will have access to such functionality as real-time, multi-user co-editing; Skype for Business for meetings, IM, voice and video calls; and Yammer, getting out of "siloed applications and cut-and-paste workflow integration."

“That integrated experience is something we’re looking forward to,” said GE chief technology officer Larry Biagini.

Biagini said the company wanted to break away from the traditional three-year upgrade cycle, which "is not sustainable for such a large company".

Through open APIs, the Office 365 deployment at GE will integrate with third-party applications such as cloud storage from Box as well as critical line-of-business applications.

It will span the company's massive global footprint in 170 countries, "from an office building in North America, to a wind farm in sub-Saharan Africa, to an oil rig in the middle of the North Atlantic".