Deployment guide available for download

Nov 24, 2009 11:00 GMT  ·  By

For the vast majority of end users the Cloud-based components of the Office 2010 System will be available exclusively via Windows Live Skydrive. As long as they are intimately connected with Windows Live, Office Web Apps are also free, but ad-supported. However, there is yet another flavor of Office 2010 Office Web Apps that is available as a standalone download and which can be installed on servers running in a corporate IT environment. Microsoft started offering download of Office Web Apps Beta alongside those of Office 2010 Beta Build 14.0.4536.1000 last week.

At the same time, the Redmond company is offering the necessary resources for IT Professionals to streamline deployment and hosting of Office Web Apps on an organization’s servers. Of course, the first thing that IT pros will need in order to start running Office Web Apps within their organizations is the solution itself. Office Web Apps are available as a Beta download from Microsoft.

In addition, the on-premise deployment of Office 2010’s Cloud components implies that a company will need to be running the latest iteration of SharePoint Server. Specifically, Office Web Apps are designed to run on top of Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 or Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 servers, in the context of on-premise deployments.

“From a high-level, the process looks like this: - Install wcsetup.exe on every machine in your farm, and run PSConfig once installation is complete - Once installed, start the aforementioned services on the boxes on which you want to run the supporting services for Office Web Apps, and then activate the service applications for the farm. - If you're going to take advantage of PowerPoint Web App to power the PowerPoint Broadcast feature, add support for that feature by creating a Broadcast Site Collection (for more information on that feature, please see this link) - Activate “Office Web Apps,” listed under SharePoint’s Site Collection Features, on each site collection for which Office Web Apps should be available,” explained Franklin Williams, a program manager on the Office Web Apps team.

Williams has shared not only additional details related to Office Web Apps on-premise deployments but also a guide to streamline such installation scenarios.

Office Web Apps Beta is available for download here. Office 2010 Beta 14.0.4536.1000 is available for download here.
Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Beta is available for download via this link.