Now, small businesses can reap the benefits of the latest technology at a predictable monthly price. The companies said that eligible small businesses merchant or account holder can qualify for a 10% discount on Microsoft’s Office 365 cloud productivity service.
Striving to popularize its offering, the software giant spends a lot of time and ad dollars promoting the Office 365 cloud suite to small-business customers. And now, thanks to a strategic alliance with MasterCard, those small-business customers can use MasterCard’s Easy Savings program to receive a 10 percent cut to the subscription price.
The program, open to businesses that have a MasterCard Easy Savings Program account, is the credit card leader’s latest proposition toward the small business category. There is an official blog entry with details, but that is pretty much the long and short of it. In October, the brand made alliance with Dell to choose “America’s Favorite Small Business,” Shwood Handcrafted Wooden Eyewear. This latest program offers a monthly discount of $0.60 per user on Office 365, a MasterCard rep says.
“Our goal is to help small businesses flourishes, and Office 365 can help them do just that by providing technology that is trusted by many of the most successful businesses in the world,” said Giovanni Mezgec, general manager of Microsoft Office/Office 365. “Partners like MasterCard bring Office 365 to millions more small businesses and help them reduce costs while gaining access to critical business services.”
“MasterCard is committed to providing small businesses with innovative products and services that improve efficiencies and help them achieve their full potential,” said Eugene De Silva, senior business leader of small and medium enterprise global products at MasterCard Worldwide. “The strength of our knowledge, insights and offerings will continue to drive real value for small businesses in two specific areas that are core to their business needs—payments and technologies.”
Moving forward, Microsoft unveiled its Office 365 in June. That suite is bundled with Microsoft Office, SharePoint Exchange and Lync in the cloud and was first released in October 2010 as Microsoft’s way of bringing popular collaboration and productivity apps to the web.
Office 365 also includes ActiveSync, a new tool that lets customers retrieve their cloud-based data from almost any device.