Hilton Worldwide is in the midst of a massive upgrade to Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 at 3,600 hotels. Robert Webb, the hotel chain's CIO, explains the vision for a cutting-edge workplace in an interview with CIO magazine's Shane O'Neill. The company is moving to Windows 7 and the newly rebranded Lync, as well. It's all part of an initiative to spur greater productivity and communication among employees scattered throughout 82 countries.

Hilton relies primarily on IBM (NYSE: IBM) for its data center and desktop support needs, but for collaboration and productivity tools it is turning to Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT). Part of the purpose in moving to Office and SharePoint 2010 is to have all of its 130,000 employees working from one platform, O'Neill reports. An emphasis will be put on SharePoint's collaboration and document-sharing functions rather than simply updating email functionality.

Employees will also be encouraged to use SharePoint's social networking tools: "We want employees to use SharePoint MySites and TeamSites [which create a Facebook-like environment] to share information or jointly edit documents with people in their departments," Webb said.

For more:
- see Shane O'Neill's article at CIO

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