Major US companies Advocate Health Care, Manpower Inc., Shell and Tampa General Hospital have become the latest to adopt the Microsoft BPOS (Business Productivity Online Suite) SaaS applications. As is often the case with cloud customer wins, Microsoft is lauding the cost savings and efficiency gains their new clients will be getting. It’s a strong list, but it’s not the arms-length announcement around their previous public sector victories.

Microsoft BPOS, soon to be relaunched as Office 365, is a cloud suite consisting of Microsoft Exchange Online, Microsoft SharePoint Online, Microsoft Office Live Meeting and Microsoft Office Communications Online. In terms of the channel, BPOS has triggered some debate because Microsoft doesn’t allow VARs to manage cloud billing for end customers.

Still, BPOS appears to be gaining some momentum. The latest Microsoft wins, according to a press release, include:

Microsoft tends to wait a long time between cloud customer deal announcements, preferring to let it all out in one go. But just as we asked in July 2010 when the previous batch was unleashed — where do Microsoft partners fit in?

No doubt, VARs and cloud service providers are winning their fare share of BPOS deals. But generally speaking Microsoft has not done a very good job promoting SMB solutions providers that are winning with BPOS.

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