Britain's hidebound state-owned Royal Mail is getting a cloud.

Yup, CSC is supposed to provide 30,000 of its employees with access to newfangled web-based services using Microsoft's Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS), part of Microsoft Online Services. CSC will also provide first line helpdesk support.

The new contract is described as an industry first: CSC is the first Microsoft service provider to win a cloud deal of this size.

The Brits will appreciate how richly ironic that fact is.

For months now Royal Mail's mailmen under the direction of their Communication Workers Union (CWU) have been staging wildcats strikes over so-called modernization. Mostly, it seems, because management wants to put in the kind of computer-run route-determining sorting machines that everybody else has. And now the CWU in a last-ditch effort to fight the tide is threatening to pull all its members out during the recession-tempered Christmas rush and louse up Royal Mail's deliveries some more.

Anyway, CSC already maintains Royal Mail's desktops and manages and develops its servers, mainframes and IT processes under a 2003 contract so this is like an expansion of that remit.

The Royal Mail will get access to Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Office Communications Online and Office Live Meeting. The post office figures to lower its costs and let its people collaborate with each other, partners and other external organizations "more freely, easily and securely."