What’s new in Surface for Business: enabling multinational deals and new product configurations

As we discussed in our last Surface for Business blog, the Surface for Business portfolio is tailored specifically for commercial and education customers. We are constantly listening to and learning from our customers and have an amazing team dedicated to continually improving our products. Today I’m excited to announce new offerings that aim to help businesses better serve their customers, enable their employees and empower students.

Enabling more multinational deals and expanding configurations for Surface Pro and Surface Laptop

We have heard requests to enable broader market support so multinational corporations can purchase Surface on a more global basis to outfit workers across subsidiaries and regional offices. Therefore, we are authorizing commercial partners to sell select configurations of Surface Pro 6 for Business and Surface Laptop 2 for Business in 11 additional European markets: Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovenia and Slovakia. These offerings will leverage an International English keyboard (Surface Pro Type Cover sold separately) and include local languages in the operating system image, with availability beginning May 1, 2019.

There is also growing interest from commercial customers wanting to outfit mainstream productivity employees with devices containing 16GB memory. While 16GB memory options are already available on Intel Core i7 models of various Surface devices, we are now offering a configuration of 16GB memory on an Intel Core i5 model with 256GB storage for both Surface Pro 6 and Surface Laptop 2. We are offering these configurations in the U.S. and Canada this month and will evaluate opportunities to expand this configuration more broadly in the future.

Celebrating commercial and education customer success

We continue to be inspired by how our commercial and education customers are using Surface for Business devices to drive transformation within their industries and better serve their customers, employees and students. Here are a few recent examples:

• The Law School Admission Council (LSAC) administers the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) – the only assessment tool accepted by every law school in the United States and Canada – to 100,000 potential law school applicants worldwide each year. As part of a broader technology initiative with Microsoft, LSAC will use Surface Go for the new Digital LSAT platform launching in July 2019. Among the reasons LSAC selected Surface Go were the numerous Windows 10 accessibility features available for test takers who need them, overall quality and reliability which is critical for users in such a high-stakes exam, and the Surface Go kickstand which allows test-takers the flexibility to angle the screen for their own comfort.
• Future of StoryTelling (FoST) supports a passionate community of people from the worlds of media, technology and communications who explore and transform how storytelling is evolving in the digital age. A year ago, FoST themselves recognized the need to transform how it uses technology to operate more effectively. They replaced a combination of Apple and other devices with Surface devices allowing employees to “select one that matches their preferences and work habits.” Interoperability was particularly important: “The way Surface devices work so smoothly with Office 365, with the applications we use, and with each other is impressive [and] makes our day-to-day jobs much easier.”
• Play’n GO specializes in developing top-quality gaming platforms and software for online and land-based casinos. They grew substantially over the last five years and recently switched the computers they use to collaborate and create on, at the same time as their switch to Microsoft 365—with Surface Laptop as the standard and Surface Studio for the art team. “For the first time in nearly 15 years, I can hold a PC in my hand that has a build quality equal to that of an Apple device. The Surface Laptop is the most reliable, problem-free laptop of any brand I’ve used,” says Christoffer Tykö, Internal IT Team Leader at Play’n GO. This standardization and the reliability of Surface devices has already helped decrease the time IT employees need to dedicate to troubleshooting company hardware, freeing the department to handle other responsibilities. The use of a unified, comprehensive solution has also paid dividends in employee productivity.

Learn more about Surface for Business or Surface for Education, check with your local reseller or contact your Microsoft representative to see which devices and prices are available for your organization or your school today.