With the advent of Office 2010, Microsoft started offering a free Cloud-based extension of the productivity suite containing four components, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. Office Web Apps are available in two different flavors, illustrative of the Redmond company’s support for customers embracing the Cloud as well as of those that still require on-premise solutions. Windows Live SkyDrive users will be able to not only store and access documents online, but also create and edit Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote files completely free of charge. In addition to the SkyDrive variant, Office Web Apps are also offered for on-premise installations to companies that want to offer users in their organizations a similar experience to Microsoft’s Cloud version of Office 2010, but running in their own data centers.

In the video embedded at the bottom of this article, Yung Chou, Senior IT Pro Evangelist for Microsoft, offers an overview of Office Web Apps. Chou discuses both scenarios related to Office Web Apps, when they’re associated with Windows Live SkyDrive or with a SharePoint Server 2010 environment.

While Office Web Apps in Windows Live SkyDrive are offered to all users for free, provided they have a valid Windows Live ID, only volume license customers can grab the actual bits for their on-premise deployments. According to Microsoft, enterprise customers that need Office Web Apps for on-premise SharePoint installations, will first require SharePoint Foundation 2010. SharePoint Foundation 2010 is a free download, but only customers with Microsoft volume licensing agreements will be able to actually deploy Office Web Apps on premise.

“Microsoft Office Web Apps are convenient online companions to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote that give you the freedom to work with your Office documents from virtually anywhere with a supported browser,” Microsoft noted of the Cloud-based extensions for Office 2010.

Office Home and Business 2010 RTM Build 14.0.4760.1000 is available for download here.

Office Home and Student 2010 RTM Build 14.0.4760.1000 is available for download here.

Office Professional 2010 RTM Build 14.0.4760.1000 is available for download here.

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