With 'Workplace-as-a-Service' Bundle, Sprint Aims to Show It Means Business

Most of Sprint’s energy since Marcelo Claure took over has focused on winning back consumers who are using a rival carrier.

With a new effort being detailed Monday, Sprint aims to show it has renewed interest in serving businesses as well.

The company is announcing a “workplace-as-a-service” offering that combines a whole host of services into one monthly bundle. For $200 per worker per month, Sprint will handle a company’s entire network, including business calling, data service, corporate Wi-Fi, management of mobile devices and collaboration and messaging services.

“We think this will become the way customers buy services,” Sprint Vice President Kevin Fitz said in an interview. While Sprint has been offering most of those services separately, as do rivals, the new bundle is designed to appeal to small and midsize businesses that don’t have big IT departments and want one-stop shopping.

The one optional component is cellular service, with Sprint acknowledging not all businesses are ready to move all their mobile phones and tablets to the carrier. Fitz said the company is offering aggressive pricing for businesses that do want Sprint mobile service, with unlimited voice, data and texting for $40 per month and tablet plans starting at $5 a month for five gigabytes of data.

Sprint is, of course, not alone in wanting business accounts. AT&T outlined a partnership with Microsoft at Mobile World Congress under which it will offer businesses the “mobile office suite” — a combination of phone and hosted email service for less than $100 per worker per month.

Fitz said that the Microsoft-AT&T service bundle offers only a portion of what Sprint does, but says it “validates that this is where the market is headed.”

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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