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Stephen Elop, the president of Microsoft’s Business Division today announced a tonne of news around Microsoft Online – our cloud services that comprise Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Office Communicator and Live Meeting.

The services that are collectively known as the Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) will be available in 15 additional countries and regions later this week. Elop also announced new customers including Aviva here in the UK, McDonald’s Rexel and Swedish Red Cross. Companies like GlaxoSmithkline are already saving around 30% of operational IT costs by replacing Lotus Notes, Domino, and Postini services with BPOS.

Elop also announced a series of price reductions for BPOS with the suite now down to only $10 per user per month whilst mailbox size goes up to 25GB.

Later this week we’ll be commercially available in Singapore with trials in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Czech Republic, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Israel, Malaysia, Mexico, Poland, Puerto Rico, Romania and Taiwan; commercial availability in India is also expected later this year. This will bring availability to a total of 36 countries and regions as the Online train keeps rolling.

This is where I spend probably 60% of my time at the moment so good to see the momentum and the hard work of friends and colleagues in Redmond starting to pay off.