StockMarketWire.com
Microsoft Corp. and Yell Group have announced plans to form a broad, global strategic alliance, taking advantage of their complementary strengths and expertise in the delivery of innovative online advertising and business solutions to assist small businesses.
Yell currently provides print and digital marketing services to over 1.3 million customers across the United States, United Kingdom, Spain and Latin America.
Capitalizing on the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance and the growing consumer audience of Bing and Yahoo! Search, Microsoft and Yell will join forces to offer compelling search, mobile and local advertising solutions to small and medium businesses and to make the most of emerging business models delivered through the cloud.
Under the plans, Yell will also offer the full suite of Microsoft's SMB productivity and business software and cloud services, including Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft Dynamics CRM and emerging SMB-focused communications solutions. In addition, Microsoft will assist Yell to accelerate its new cloud-based services, which will provide Yell's customers with access to these new digital offerings.
Thomas Hansen, vice president of SMB Worldwide at Microsoft, said, "Yell Group has one of the largest dedicated sales forces partnering with small and medium sized businesses and provides customers with valuable, locally focused internet directories that see over 50 million unique visitors per month.
"We are very excited about our plans to form a strategic alliance with Yell, as it offers us a way to better reach and serve small and medium sized businesses across the globe."