You’re in the Army now, Office 365

The US Army gave Microsoft an early Christmas gift by purchasing 50,000 seat licenses for their collaboration toolset, Office 365.

The U.S. Army will purchase 50,000 seat licenses of Microsoft’s Office 365 suite of cloud-based Office and collaboration applications, Microsoft announced Monday. The blanket purchase agreement, issued by the Army Program Executive Office for Enterprise Information Systems (PEO-EIS), includes email and calendaring, Office Web Apps, Microsoft Lync unified communications capabilities and SharePoint collaboration tools.

The PEO-EIS manages a variety of contracting programs for the Army, totaling nearly $3 billion in purchases in fiscal year 2013, according to program executive officer Douglas Wiltsie.