Yell Group Plc (YELL.L) Tuesday said it plans to form a strategic alliance with software giant Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) to offer innovative online advertising and business solutions to small and medium sized businesses, or SMB.
Yell is a provider of print and digital marketing services to over 1.3 million customers across the U.S., U.K., Spain and Latin America.
In this broad, global alliance, the two companies will make use of their complementary strengths and expertise to deliver these solutions to assist such businesses reach and engage consumers.
The global digital services market for SMBs is estimated to be $235 billion this year. It is expected to grow by over 45 percent to $350 billion by 2015.
"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," Yell said.
According to 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.
Additionally, Microsoft will also assist Yell to speed up its new cloud-based services that will provide Yell's customers with access to these new digital offerings.
Mike Pocock, Yell Group CEO, said, "Our plans to form a global strategic alliance with Microsoft will help us launch our local, cloud-based marketplace, serving the growing needs of our customers by providing comprehensive digital advertising, productivity and business solutions at scale, bringing small and medium sized businesses ever closer to consumers and bringing reduced costs and competitive capabilities to SMBs that have, to date, only been available to larger enterprises."
YELL.L closed Monday's regular trade at 9.49 pence, up 0.80 pence or 9.21 percent, on 16.79 million shares.
MSFT settled Monday at $26.63, down $0.29 or 1.08 percent, on 44 million shares.
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