Tesco has struck an eight-year deal with Microsoft to develop a ‘global collaboration platform’ based on its software.

The platform will be built using Microsoft’s SharePoint document management system, Exchange for email, and its unified communications software Lync, formerly known as Microsoft Office Communicator.

The company said this platform would assist its global expansion strategy by supporting knowledge and information sharing across its 14 geographies. “We have lots of colleagues in Tesco, doing lots of jobs all over the world,” said group CIO Mike McNamara in a statement. “These technologies can help bring us together to share learning and expertise, views and opinions, thoughts and ideas.”

Tesco has to date used Cisco’s web conferencing service WebEx, as well as its telepresence platform.

The deal also gives Tesco access to the latest editions of Microsoft’s Windows operating system and Office desktop software, plus its BizSpark service bus and SQL Server database software.

Notably absent from that list is Hyper-V, Microsoft’s server virtualisation platform. Tesco adopted Citrix’s XenServer product for server virtualisation in 2008 after an independent review of its data centre resources found that it only had capacity for one more years’ growth.

Financial details of the deal were not disclosed.