By Tom Noda
Utility firm Meralco signed on October 9 a $3.3-million, three-year contract with Microsoft Philippines for its migration to the Office 365 cloud-based solution.
Meralco vice president and chief-information-officer Marthyn Cuan said the adoption to Office 365 is expected to improve the company’s workplace collaboration and productivity, as well as drive workforce mobility.
Because of the contract, Meralco employees will now have online access to the latest versions of Microsoft Office and collaborative tools such as instant messaging and video conferencing portals, including social media for the workplace with Yammer.
Cuan said by enhancing workplace collaboration, Meralco looks forward to generating more energy solutions for its customers.
According to Meralco president and CEO Oscar Reyes, the power company now has 5.5 million residential, commercial, and industrial customers encompassing 25 million people.
“We service close to a quarter of the country’s total population and the business industries that produce half of the Philippines gross domestic product and we have a very strategic franchise area,” Reyes said.
Cuan said Meralco is looking into creating a secured power supply, a more reliable electric system, and solutions that will help its customers manage their electric bills.
He said solutions such as Windows Azure, StorSimple and other products available are part of Meralco’s agreement with Microsoft Philippines.
“Given that we have the platform available, we should be able to develop solutions not just for a complete capacity but at the same time available storage and gives us more capacity and dynamic usage depending on the requirement of the solution we deploy,” Cuan said.
