Although Microsoft today is not necessarily known as a founder in any area, no one can accuse them of not being attentive to new computing trends and technologies. Its new cloud-based collaboration tool, Microsoft Office 365, appears to be a well-built rival to Google Apps.
Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Standards Suite has been on the market for some time, and the new generation represents a full commitment to the benefits of cloud computing in Office 365. Software as a service is now in beta and sees Microsoft joining the versions of its products for communication and collaboration in an integrated exam, ‘no updates needed’.
Office 365 will launch later this year (in 2011) and is set to contain:
• Microsoft Office Professional Plus for normal desktop applications
• Sharepoint Online for collaborative tasks
• Exchange Online for email
• Lync Online for integrated communications
An adaptation of Office 365 including Microsoft Dynamics CRM will also be released later.
Microsoft hasn’t outlined a full rundown of the functions and features that will be available through Office 365. However, IT and tech industry analysts say the offering is showing great potential.
Michael Osterman, president of Osterman Research, said, “Conceptually, Office 365 is a great idea. From a functional perspective, the integration of the online Office suite with hosted Exchange, SharePoint, and Lync servers will be very helpful.”
Osterman noted that having a consistent desktop experience for users on stationary machines and cloud computing will be a boon, especially with the mobile workforce revolution in full swing. This reduces training time for transitions to cloud-based operations and ultimately improves efficiency.
One of the key changes for companies already using Sharepoint won’t be the move to the cloud itself, but the simultaneous upgrade from Sharepoint 2007 to Sharepoint 2010, says Kathleen Reidy, senior analyst with the 451 group.
Reidy recently cited that “SharePoint in Office 365 should be fairly feature-rich… There will be collaboration, content management, portal, and search capabilities, for example, so that a small organization can set up an intranet, publish content, and enable sharing of information.” files and collaboration around this shared repository.
Microsoft itself sees one of the most important benefits of Office 365 as its scalability and applicability to almost all corporations and businesses. For example, for the first time, small businesses and nonprofits can have access to enterprise-scale software. Government organizations can use Office 365 to improve cost efficiency, minimize training time, and reduce IT workload.
There will be 3 different versions of Office 265 initially available: Small Business, Enterprise, and Education. Each of these will have access to the 4 services mentioned above, with the standard package of Microsoft Office, SharePoint, Lync and MS Exchange all included in the product.
Most impressive to some, Office 365 can be up and running within a small organization in just a quarter of an hour.
Another valuable benefit of the platform will be access to technical support and troubleshooting, which can be difficult to obtain with the free Google Apps product. However, the pricing strategy is seen as aggressive: low-end packages are seen as efficiently affordable for small and medium-sized businesses.
Reidy went on to say, “Particularly for smaller organizations that wouldn’t normally have the resources to buy, install, run, and maintain SharePoint, this is a very cost-effective option that will give them quite a bit of functionality from a basic file-sharing standpoint. content management point of view.
If you think your business or organization could benefit from the flexibility of cloud computing, then Office 365 will certainly be right for you. The platform does not require the need for additional infrastructure, a learning curve for the new system, or renewed security measures.
