Office 365, frankly, is to Google Apps as XBOX 360 Live is to Pong. Microsoft has turned the heart and soul of day-to-day computing over to the cloud in a manner that every enterprise, business or government entity can access in a meaningful way.And it’s done so in a way that should embarrass Google, one of Microsoft’s primary rivals. Office came pre-installed on my computer If Office came with your PC, Mac, Laptop, or tablet, look for the product key on the Certificate of Authenticity that came with your computer.Office 365 has now reached public beta, so let the questions and the discussion begin.A one-week examination of Office 365’s beta by the CRN Test Center finds much more than just a simple, online suite of productivity tools.
Can I Trade In My Office 2010 For Office Software Giant StillWhen Microsoft executives briefed reviewers on Office 365 earlier this month, they were clear that the Redmond, Wash.-based software giant still considered the solution provider channel to be its strategic go-to-market plan – and with good reason.But Office 365 is so radically different from other approaches we’ve seen from Microsoft in the productivity and collaboration spaces, that it will have a major impact all through the pipeline. Several tasks like integration of existing, premise-based mailboxes with Office 365 are not automatic, either. For extended functionality, including single sign-on, the solution still requires a working knowledge of Active Directory.![]() It works almost seamlessly with Mac OS X It integrates both with Office 2010 and some earlier platforms, as well as Office Live, it’s free, web-based extension of its productivity suite It integrates this technology with mobile platforms including iPhone and Windows Phone 7 This is not difficult Microsoft provides a three-step wizard for domain addition to Office 365 through Microsoft Online Services.Users are provided with 25 GB of storage and security features (such as litigation hold on email deletion) can be controlled by enabling or disabling them via check boxes. This console provides for license management, adding users, defining their security levels, creating ’security groups’ and creating levels of functionality throughout.Administrative privileges also allow for porting an organizations domain name to Office 365. While this remains a concern for any production-quality business solutions in the cloud, and will remain an area to watch as the Office 365 installed base grows, for now it appears to be on a reliable network.Once an account is opened up, a designated administrator finds a straightforward, easy-to-access management console. In a week of testing, we ran into no downtime. It takes about 5 minutes to set up an SMB enterprise productivity and collaboration infrastructure on Office 365, and about a minute to add users and tailor their permissions and access Free porn blocker for macIt’s included in the Office 365 package.Collaboration features are familiar to those versed in the Exchange and SharePoint worlds. As with Exchange in Office 365, there is no separate server that needs installation. From choosing whether to issue storage capacity warnings at 24.5 GB or 24.75 GB or 25 GB, to setting an organizations email archiving preferences, to enabling or disabling Active Sync and Unified Messaging (even whether to provide a ’Mail Tip’ to users), Microsoft allows for drop-down-box like control over what a user gets or doesn’t get.If someone doesn’t have training in Exchange administration, it’s fairly easy through Office 365 to get started.SharePoint comes ready to use with built-in Team Site functionality. While some VARs may see this as a move that undercuts their own pricing or their own relationships with customers, others may very well be highly competitive with their own deployments of either on-premise or cloud-based versions of these products.Still other solution providers may view Microsoft’s cloud-based bundling of SharePoint, Exchange and Lync services, with Microsoft Office tools, as a plus that will allow them to focus on other areas of a customer’s IT and business needs – including broader security, mobility, virtualization and data center architecture and management.In any event, Microsoft is now putting a price to its productivity, messaging and communications in the cloud: $6 per month, per user. It does allow for creation of custom plans for an enterprise: either a deployment or pilot rollout inclusion of Exchange, SharePoint, Lync and Microsoft Office Professional Plus server capabilities and feature-by-feature rollout on an individual schedule - with a very granular console.For $6 per month, per user, Microsoft is working to simplify not just the deployment of IT but the monthly cost model as well. (This is done through a page of check boxes.)To a degree, Office 365 is not just a ’take it or leave it,’ or ’one size fits all’ offering. It also integrates with the calendar and task features in Office 365, and provides a wiki-like Team Discussion creation tool that permits for separate discussion threads on separate topics.Document sharing is provided, and with access control.Throughout, Microsoft has built a familiar ribbon at the top of the Team Site page that guide customization of each page or discussion thread, and there appears to be no feature loss between the online version and the on-premise version of SharePoint.Lync is the current product name for Microsoft Office Communication Services (OCS), so get used to the new branding if you have not yet.Deploying this part of Office 365 allows for user-by-user management of file transfers, audio and video, domain federation and public IM connectivity. ![]()
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