BT Group Plc ( ) has announced a deal to market and deliver Microsoft ( ) online services to business customers. They will have access to integrated cloud computing and collaboration services. BT is the first telecom service provider to resell the Dedicated Business Productivity Online Suite to enterprise organizations.

Microsoft Exchange Online, Microsoft SharePoint Online, Microsoft Office Communications Online and Microsoft Office Live Meeting will now become available to BT customers. The company plans to integrate Microsoft’s product suite into its 21CN network and facilitate a fully-loaded managed services platform featuring power, performance management, maintenance and software upgrades. This will ensure a higher quality of service and efficient network performance.

The announcement extends a long-standing partnership between BT and Microsoft in selling and delivering business services and solutions to small-to-medium sized and enterprise customers. BT is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner.

Cloud computing is a style of computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources are provided as a service over the Internet. Users need not have knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure in the "cloud" that supports them. Cloud computing customers do not generally own the physical infrastructure serving as host to the software platform in question. Instead, they avoid capital expenditure by renting usage from a third-party provider. They consume resources as a service and pay only for resources that they use.

BT Group Plc is an incumbent phone company providing fixed-line and data services to the United Kingdom. It owns or has stakes in operations in North America, the Asia/Pacific region and Western Europe. For strategic purposes, BT differentiates its business into two distinct markets: Traditional business lines and New Wave business lines, such as Broadband, Information and Communications Technology (ICT), Mobility, and Managed Services.

We continue to maintain our Hold recommendation on BT.