Microsoft took the wraps off a new Office 365 cloud-computing platform Tuesday. The platform is rolling out in beta test mode to selected customers in Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Singapore, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The goal is to provide individuals, businesses, government agencies, and organizations with up-to-date access to Microsoft Office, SharePoint Online, Exchange Online, and Lync Online applications, the software giant said.
If Microsoft can combine its considerable Office assets with the right mix of capabilities, service levels and pricing, the software giant will likely make money on the venture, observed Al Hilwa, director of application software development at IDC. He also noted that compatibility with existing document assets in the enterprise is a big deal.
“Organizations are likely to draw a fair amount of comfort from a Microsoft offering in the cloud in a way that other players will find hard to match,” Hilwa said.
Big-Business Capabilities for Everyone
Office 365 provides individuals, small businesses, and companies with fewer than 25 employees with access to the same software tools already in the hands of professionals at significantly larger organizations. Moreover, Few customers have the resources to deploy Office, SharePoint, Exchange and Lync together, observed Kurt DelBene, president of the Office business division at Microsoft.
“Because the cloud takes advantage of the scales of economy and the skills of economy,” DelBene said, “technology built for the largest businesses becomes accessible to the smallest businesses.”
Moreover, in a few clicks a small business can have 20 football fields of data-center capacity and a highly experienced IT team at its fingertips. “It’s not feasible for any single company to acquire these resources on its own,” DelBene explained.
Moving to the cloud also means individuals won’t have to change the way they work because…