BT rolls out Microsoft Sharepoint 2010

BT rolls out Microsoft Sharepoint 2010
BT is to roll out Facebook-style social networking services to its 100,000 employees, in a move that will allow staff to collaborate more effectively on projects whether they are in the office or working remotely.

The company, which reported £1m profits this month, said the system would lead to significant gains in productivity and help the organisation keep track of the skills of its workforce MCTS Training.

BT is an early adopter of Microsoft's business collaboration platform, SharePoint 2010. It is using the platform to build advanced social networking and collaboration tools, which will be rolled out across the organisation between now and the end of the year.

The project is part of a wider programme that will see BT replace between 30,000 and 40,000 Windows XP desktops with Windows 7 by the end of 2010. At the same time the company plans to upgrade from Office 2007 to Office 2010 in a move that it predicts will bring further productivity benefits.

Peter Scott, BT's chief technology officer for end-user technology, is responsible for providing these infrastructure services. BT is such a large organisation, he said, that even small improvements to BT's IT infrastructure can bring huge efficiency gains when multiplied across the whole organisation.

"We have challenges around our cost base, where we want to reduce overall how much it costs us to do things. We want to do things in a smarter way. We want the outcome to be better than before," he said. "A tool-set, like SharePoint, that allows us to underpin all of that, we see as a very powerful business enabler."

The company has developed two powerful social networking tools that it plans to roll out to staff over the coming months, as it upgrades its infrastructure from SharePoint 2007 and SharePoint 2010.

The first will offer each employee of BT a Facebook-like profile page. It promises to make it easier for BT staff to find the right experts within the company for the projects they are working on. They will be able to see at a glance what projects, and even what documents, other members of staff are working on MCITP Certification.

"It brings some of the social networking elements into our business. People can expose much more information in real time. It is going to allow people to get plugged into other people and discover what other things are going on, and where the people are with the skills and experience that would help them," Scott said.