Outsourcery, Nokia launch OCS scheme

Hosted IT services, UC specialist and Microsoft Gold partner Outsourcery has hooked up with Nokia through its InPartnership programme to push sales of the mobile version of Microsoft OCS.

The first stage of the JV will be involve heavy promotion of Microsoft Mobile Communicator-ready handsets to Outsourcery partners. In the future, the duo have made plans to allow Outsourcery to manage Mobile Communicator on Nokia smartphones.

"By joining together Microsoft's productivity solutions with Nokia's customer base, the three companies are able to serve the needs of the growing mobile worker population, which IDC estimates to reach 1 billion worldwide in 2011," said Microsoft communications sector industry director Alex Danyluk.

Meanwhile, Outsourcery today issued a warning over the economic cost of next Monday's planned tube strike in London.

Outsourcery cited figures from the London Chamber of Commerce that suggested the local economy could lose up to £48m during each 24-hour stoppage.

CEO Piers Linney reported that enquiries into UC and cloud solutions had already risen by 125% in advance of the walk-out, suggesting that awareness, and promotion, of such solutions within the channel is growing.