Orange Business Services is expanding its consulting, integration and managed services to support Microsoft’s unified communications, instant messaging, video and Web conferencing software.

Orange Business Services will help companies roll out collaboration tools on their IP VPNs or MPLS networks based on Microsoft’s Office Communications Server 2007, Exchange Server 2007, Forefront and Office SharePoint Server. Customers can choose to run the Microsoft applications themselves or hand off management to Orange Business Services.

Orange Business Services has dubbed the partnership "Business Together with Microsoft," and it is available immediately.

"We have 1,500 MPLS customers, and most of them are ready to launch collaboration solutions," says Axel Haentjens, vice president of marketing at Orange Business Services. "We now have a good solution for unified messaging, for workflow, for instant messaging. The solutions are there and the IP infrastructure is there. I think the market is mature."

Microsoft’s latest software will allow companies to give new collaboration tools to office, mobile and remote workers. End users will be able to access their mailboxes, view voice messages as e-mails, read faxes, make VoIP calls and access their contacts and calendars through a single Windows Outlook interface. End users also will be able to communicate in real-time with each other through audio, video and Web conferencing or instant messaging.

Customers are "happy to have a company like Orange come in and assess what the legacy situation is, build the business case for unified communications, tell them what the cost is and what they can expect and define a path to implement the solution," Haentjens says. "We offer consulting and integration and then we give the choice to the customer for us to manage the whole solution on a utility basis or we will just deliver it as a turnkey solution."

One early customer is NXP Semiconductors, a Dutch manufacturer that operates in more than 20 countries. NXP has an IP VPN, and now it is rolling out an instant messaging solution to more than 1,000 end users. Orange Business will be managing the instant messaging solution for NXP.

"Any kind of business needs to implement collaboration, video conferencing and Web conferencing, especially the multinational companies," Haentjens says. "The stronger contribution for Orange Business Services is for global warming. Our customers will be able to save travels, and people will be able to work more efficiently remotely from home or from the office."