Microsoft Adds More Value to the Office 365 K-Plan

Microsoft's Office 365 has now more to deliver as part of the Kiosk worker offering in Office 365 (aka the K-plan).

This plan was put in place for those users who have been looking for messaging and collaboration capabilities. Featuring a low cost, it has to offer a common platform for communicating with workers that are part of this category.

The offering came with a monthly price starting at USD $2 for the Exchange Online Kiosk Plan, which was already seen as providing great value.

However, the new Office 365 changes to the K-plan are meant to deliver to users more features at the same price tag, Microsoft's Jesper Osgaard explains in a recent blog post:

- We're adding Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) for mobile devices to the Exchange Online Kiosk plan, giving you mobile support beyond the POP capabilities currently supported in the Kiosk sku.

- We are also doubling email storage in the K plan from 500MB to 1GB

The addition of Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) to the K-plan is meant to offer support for all smartphones that are compatible with the technology, including iPhone, Android, Nokia phones running under Symbian, as well as Windows phones.

At the same time, Jesper Osgaard announced a series of Exchange Online Archiving changes.

“Going forward, we will now allow Exchange Online Archiving (EOA) including legal hold and unlimited storage, to be offered as an add-on to any Exchange Online plan, including Kiosk and Exchange Plan 1,” he notes.

Unfortunately, no specific info on when the changes will take effect has emerged for the time being. Microsoft will most probably unveil more on this when the time is right.

The Redmond-based company is supposed to have sold over 5 million Office 365 seats, most of which went to small businesses. Launched back in June 2010, the Office 365 bundle includes Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and Lync Online.