Earlier this week Microsoft announced its online productivity suite – Office 365. With quite a large base of features and functionality it’s essentially Microsoft’s answer to other top tier online productivity suites like Google Docs and Apple’s iWork.com. The most feature rich version of the service offers document viewing and editing through the Web Apps; email and calendar through Exchange Online; document sharing and your company intranet with SharePoint Online; and calling, web conferencing and instant messaging with Lync Online. Any mobile device that supports ActiveSync (that would be all Windows Mobile/Windows Phone devices, iOS devices and any device running Android 2.1 or better) will be able to access mobile docs. No word yet as to whether mobile editing will be supported. Web applications include a version of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. Microsoft also claims other features such as multiple person document editing, and photo and video editing.
Some included features:
- Master your Inbox and calendar with Conversation View and other advanced management tools in Outlook
- Leverage the power of business and social networking right within Outlook with the Outlook Social Connector
- Collaborate with control and confidence with co-authoring
- Instantly share slideshows, across town or around the world with PowerPoint Broadcast Slide Show
- Create presentations that are as brilliant to watch as they are easy to create with new video and photo editing tools in PowerPoint
- Quickly work with hundreds of millions of rows of data in Excel. Transform enormous quantities of data into meaningful information
This service is still in a beta testing phase, and won’t be available until sometime early 2011. If you have any questions please feel free to contact us.
Screenshot 1: Web Application for Word
Screenshot 2: Web Application for Excel
Screenshot 4: Main Page
