14 DAY TRIAL // When Microsoft announced Office 365 on October 19th, the company’s upcoming Cloud productivity solution, it also mentioned that it will tailor offerings to small businesses and enterprise customers. However, all customers will be able to access the same enterprise-grade services from the software giant.
Obviously, Microsoft focused Office 365 to specific consumer segments, and let’s face it, it was the right thing to do, since small businesses have different needs than corporations.
Office 365 for small businesses
I had the chance to talk to Microsoft employees working on the Cloud on several occasions, and one thing was clear from all our discussions, all customers want enterprise-grade solutions.
Why should small businesses be penalized simply because they are running with a small number of workers, as opposed to thousands of employees? Well, they shouldn’t.
And with Office 365, small businesses, professionals and small companies with fewer than 25 employees, will be able to access to a subset of the offering tailored to enterprise customers.
The resources that a small business needs to allocate to deploy and manage on-premise servers with Exchange Server or SharePoint Server would far outweigh the benefits of having a machine running somewhere in the organization.
With Office 365, small businesses will be able to leverage Office Web Apps, Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and Lync Online for just $6 a month.
“This is really focused on 1 to 25 users, so we think that the independent professional working on their own is going to love this service.
“Targeted at the very, very loose end, no IT needed, incredibly fast and easy to get up and running with a trial, and then to buy it. We've got a financially backed guaranteed SLA of 99.9 percent uptime, and then when it comes to the actually functionality that we're providing, we think small businesses are going to love this.
“Of course e-mail and calendaring using Exchange, but as mentioned it's mobile. You can use your iPad, you can use your iPhone, you can use your Android device, you can use a Windows Phone 7 device, anything that supports Active Sync means that you connect to Office 365 very easily, and you've got e-mail on the go.
“We're also delivering a public-facing website for small businesses, so they can create their own presence on the Internet with incredibly simple tools that they can use just using SharePoint to edit and publish content on the Web.
“We're also providing an intranet, or team site capability, for small businesses to collaborate inside their company, and extranet capabilities so they can create a team site that they then share with people outside their small business, maybe their lawyer, or their accountant, or their PR agency.
“So, whether it's Internet, extranet, or intranet, our Office 365 has small businesses covered. This offer also includes the Office Web Applications, being able to run lightweight versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, et cetera, in the browser."
“And we think small businesses will absolutely love the videoconferencing technology that Lync brings to the table to connect them with people all over the planet, and do audio and videoconferencing, all of this for $6 per user per month,” revealed Chris Capossela, Senior Vice President, Information Worker Product Management Group.
Office 365 for enterprise
Corporations get not only the best that Office 365 has to offer, but also the flexibility to actually tailor the offering from the Redmond company to the specific needs of groups of employees.
Capossela explained that feedback from various CIOs made it perfectly clear that they need some services for their information workers and only a subset for employees responsible with the manufacturing process.
While allowing enterprise customers to choose which services are available to which users, Microsoft is also only charging them for what they use, as opposite to the entire Office 365 offerings.
But most importantly, Office 365 will be management heaven, since all users, from the CEO to shop flow will be leveraging the same solution.
“Office 365 for enterprises will have a variety of different offers ranging from that kiosk worker, or that manufacturing shop floor worker, who really just needs very basic e-mail, all the way up to the CFO of the company, who needs the richest tools at their disposal,” Capossela added.
“Of course, enterprise-quality support, and one of our top requested features, a single sign-on, which allows you to just sign on to your PC, and will automatically sign you in to Office 365 at the same time.
“When you subscribe to Office 365, you have the ability to download Office Pro Plus, the rich client, onto your machine, and run it on your machine.
It automatically connects up to the Office 365 cloud for Exchange and SharePoint and Lync, and you've got the best of both worlds. You've got the rich experience on your PC, you've got the reach experience in the browser, and of course, you've got the mobile phone as well. “The offers here range from $2 per user per month for the sort of manufacturing shop floor, very basic e-mail, up to $27 per user per month list price. Obviously volume discounts will apply.
“So, we couldn't be more excited about being able to bring the right offer to the right user on a single platform. And I know our customers are really looking forward to that as well,” Capossela said.
