Barilla Gets a Bite of Cloud Computing From Microsoft Office 365

Leading Italian food company chooses Microsoft for cloud-based productivity.

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Nov 27, 2012, 09:00 ET

REDMOND, Wash., Nov. 27, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Barilla Group is a major Italian food company and a worldwide leader in the pasta market, exporting to more than 100 countries from 41 production facilities (13 in Italy and 28 abroad). With more than 13,000 employees around the world, a need arose for the company to profoundly evolve the way Barilla people communicate, collaborate and interact.

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After analyzing other cloud platforms, Barilla chose Microsoft for better IT interoperation and enterprise expertise across its services and products.

"Because information technologies are constantly under technological, economic and regulatory pressure, Barilla recognized Microsoft as the only partner able to set us out on the path toward worldwide adoption of the cloud," said Mauro Viacava, chief information officer, Barilla Group. "We chose Microsoft Office 365, which offered a solution that is perfectly integrated with our enterprise environment and with the digital tools employees and partners already use."

The service was deployed in phases between 2010 and 2011 in partnership with Teorema Engineering Srl, a Microsoft Gold Competency Partner, which also provided special training to 1,200 key employees at Barilla offices and plants all over the world. Office 365 allows users to collaborate, interact and share documents online, communicate easily via videoconferencing and instant messaging, and access email from many types of devices in virtually any location, addressing both geographic and organizational hierarchy obstacles at once.

The Barilla Community Platform was born with Office 365 as well, complete with a modern, efficient platform that allows Barilla to effectively and easily manage the structured interaction among employees in its branch offices, production plants and on the road, while simultaneously allowing the information systems team to focus on process innovation. Both these strategies are designed to ultimately save the company time, money and resources.

"We have reduced travel costs by about 30 percent, thanks to the project," Viacava said. "In the future, we intend to further grow the collaboration between mobile phones and the content of the Office 365 suite."

Read more about Barilla's implementation of Office 365 in the case study here, or learn more about Office 365 and try a free trial here.

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SOURCE Microsoft