REDMOND, Wash. — Oct. 1 , 20 12 — Microsoft Corp. today announced that Toyota Motor Corp. has chosen Microsoft’s technology platforms to build its communications and collaboration infrastructure for the Toyota family of companies worldwide.

Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc., and other affiliates in North America began the deployment of Microsoft Office 365-dedicated cloud services as their exclusive environment in June 2012. In Japan and other overseas affiliates, Toyota will be leveraging a hybrid model, with on-premises editions of Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Lync and Windows Server.

Microsoft will help Toyota provide these services to more than 200,000 employees around the world during the next two years. The goal of implementing this Microsoft platform is to better support mobile devices, reduce costs, and improve collaboration between employees with state-of-the-art enterprise social networking, conferencing, messaging and information-sharing tools.

“We continually strive to make our business stronger by improving Toyota’s organizational health, and today’s announcement to upgrade our communications is another step toward that goal,” said Shigeki Tomoyama, managing officer at Toyota. “We strongly believe that Microsoft has the most capable platform that delivers ease, excellence and efficiency required to provide the communication experience our employees expect.”

“Toyota’s decision to deploy Office 365, Exchange, SharePoint, Lync and Windows Server to its 200,000 employees worldwide is further evidence of the enterprise-class quality and scalability of the world’s most popular productivity platform, as well as another key milestone in our growing alliance together,” said Microsoft Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner. “By seamlessly integrating both cloud and on-premises environments, Toyota will enable its employees to effortlessly collaborate and communicate with each other, whether they are within the same four walls or in locations around the world.”

This announcement represents an expansion of Toyota’s collaboration with Microsoft technologies. In April 2011, Toyota and Microsoft partnered to provide next-generation telematics services using the Windows Azure cloud platform. Today’s announcement expands that initial investment and includes participation in Microsoft early adopter programs to test new products before they are released.

“I am delighted that, following the forging of our strategic agreement in 2011, Toyota has chosen the Microsoft platform to build its global IT communication infrastructure and that our two companies are further expanding their partnership as a result,” said Yasuyuki Higuchi, president and CEO, Microsoft Japan. “The building of a communication infrastructure for the 200,000-plus users in Toyota and its group companies in Japan, America and throughout the world is one of the largest projects that Microsoft has ever undertaken.”

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