Nov 29, 2010 09:36 GMT  ·  By

One of the great promises of a Cloud productivity suite is anywhere access to content, independent of the devices that users are running.

Office 365 is currently in Beta stage, and the Cloud component of Office 2010 has yet to reach device agnostic status.

Still, Microsoft has done a pretty god job of offering support for a variety of devices, in addition to machines capable of running Internet Explorer 7, IE8 or IE9 on Windows, Safari 4 and greater on Mac OS X and Firefox 3.5 and greater on Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Essentially, the Redmond company has worked to make it possible for customers with modern phones to connect to Office Web Apps and view documents online.

“Users can view Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files using Office Web Apps on most modern smartphones,” the software giant informed.

“For Office Web Apps on SharePoint, the following mobile browsers are supported:

• Internet Explorer on Windows Mobile 5/6/6.1/6.5

• Safari4 on iPhone 3G/S

• BlackBerry 4.x and later

• Nokia S60

• NetFront 3.4, 3.5 and later

• Opera Mobile 8.65 and later

• Openwave 6.2, 7.0, and later

The Apple iPad is supported for viewing Word and PowerPoint files.”

Of course, Windows Phone 7 devices also need to be added to the above list, with the latest version of the Windows mobile platform being the most Cloud-friendly out of all its predecessors.

Microsoft is preparing to launch Office 365 in 2011, with Office Web Apps already live as a part of Windows Live SkyDrive.

“To access pages using mobile devices, the URL is identical to that used by browsers running on client computers.

“However, this can vary depending on the configuration and presence of web proxies. Users can click E-mail a Link on the Share and Track tab of the ribbon in SharePoint to receive the address in email on an SMTP service-enabled SharePoint server,” Microsoft explained.