Microsoft Office 365 for professionals and small businesses is a subscription service that combines Microsoft Office Web Apps with a set of web-enabled tools that are easy to learn and use, that work with your existing hardware, and that come backed by the robust security, reliability, and control you need to run your business.
Two beta programs are being offered for Office 365.
· A )Office 365 (Plan E3)
Is ideal for larger, IT-based organizations.
· B) Office 365 (Plan P1)
Is best suited for professionals and small businesses - ideal for organizations that have 25 or fewer employees and no IT support.
New Best thing with office 365 "Office in the cloud".
The Office 365 service offering is that and so much more! With some Office 365 plans, you have access to familiar Office applications that are installed locally on your PC, but are downloaded and licensed from the cloud. Those Office 365 service plans expand this experience by combining those Office applications with the latest versions of our cloud productivity services: Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and Lync Online. These services combine to provide you with the most comprehensive productivity solution for your business needs.
Components/Products in Microsoft Office 365.
· Microsoft Exchange Online
Based on the same technology as Exchange Server 2010[citation needed], Microsoft Exchange Online is a service for email and personal information management features such as calendaring, contact lists, and task lists. It also includes features such as voicemail delivery to a person's inbox, anti-spam and anti-virus protection, archiving, Conversation View, and MailTips. It can be accessed using Microsoft Office Outlook on the desktop, Outlook Web App in web browsers, and Outlook Mobile on certain mobile devices. Exchange ActiveSync provides mobile connectivity to Exchange services and mobile email applications.
· Microsoft SharePoint Online
Microsoft SharePoint Online is a service for collaboration, sharing, and editing of documents using internal and external sites including My Sites, Team Sites, Intranet Sites, and Extranet Sites. It can also be used to create public-facing Web sites.
· Microsoft Lync Online
Microsoft Lync Online provides communications features including presence information, instant messaging, PC-to-PC audio/video calling and online meetings that can include PC audio, video and web conferencing with application sharing, whiteboards, and other collaboration tools. Lync Online is accessed through the Lync client. Lync Online also supports presence information and click-to-communicate features inside Microsoft Office applications. Currently the Lync components of Office 365 exclude Lync's Enterprise Voice feature set.[citation needed]
· Office Professional Plus
Microsoft Office Professional Plus in Office 365 provides the same client software as the Office Professional Plus product available through Microsoft Volume Licensing, with the exception that the Office 365 version lacks Business Contact Manager.[citation needed]
Office Professional Plus in Office 365 has month-to-month, per-user licensing. It can be installed by users from Microsoft Online Services or from a server hosted by the subscribing organization. It is activated using the same Microsoft Online Services ID that users employ to sign in to Office 365 and the license is renewed on a 30-day cycle. The advantage of this is that organizations can exactly match the number of licenses they pay for with the number of users who need them. Office Professional Plus in Office 365 also includes Office Web Apps.
· Office Web Apps
Office Web Apps are browser-based versions of Microsoft Excel, Word, and PowerPoint that enable viewing and lightweight editing of Office documents in Web browsers while preserving the formatting of the original documents.
Why Use Microsoft Office 365
In today’s competitive global market, businesses of all sizes need technology that enables flexibility and that cost-effectively adds value to their organization. Cloud-based services provide a way to meet these objectives. They deliver feature-rich productivity tools to users and help to relieve the burden of managing and maintaining business systems—freeing up IT departments and businesses to focus on initiatives that can deliver true competitive advantage.
System requirements Microsoft Office 365
· Operating systems
Windows 7
Windows Vista with Service Pack 2
Windows XP with Service Pack 3
Windows XP Home Edition is supported, but it will not support federated identity
Windows XP Media Center Edition is supported, but it will not support federated identity
Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, 10.6 Snow Leopard
· System software
Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 (for Windows XP)
Java client 1.4.2 (for Macintosh OS X)
· Office clients
Microsoft Office 2010 or Office 2007 Service Pack 2
Office 2008 for Mac and Microsoft Entourage 2008 Web Services Edition
Office 2011 for Mac and Outlook 2011 for Mac
.NET Framework 2.0 or later
Microsoft Lync 2010
· Client applications
Services Connector
· Browser software—Microsoft Online Portal
Internet Explorer 7 or later
Mozilla Firefox 3.x
Apple Safari 3.x
· Browser requirements—Microsoft Outlook Web App
Internet Explorer 7 or later
Firefox 3 or later
Safari 3 or later on Macintosh OS X 10.5
Chrome 3 and later versions
Outlook Web App also has a light version that supports a reduced set of features on almost any browser
Features in Microsoft Office 365
· Reliability - Microsoft Online Services provides a service level agreement (SLA) and has a 99.9 percent scheduled uptime. Microsoft has multiple datacenters, located all over the world, hosting redundant network architecture.
· Compliance - Microsoft Office 365 services have been certified as compliant with ISO 27001 standards, completed SAS70 Type I and II audits, and achieved the EU Safe Harbor seal.
· Compatibility - Microsoft Online Services supports not only Windows 7 and Vista (SP2), but also Windows XP SP3. Even XP Home edition or Media Center edition can be used, although it doesn’t support federated identity. Mac users can also access the Office 365 applications, using OS X 10.5 (Leopard) or 10.6 (Snow Leopard).
· Up-to-date versions - The services run on Exchange 2010 SP1, SharePoint 2010, and Lync. Client software is Microsoft Lync 2010 for Windows (Communicator for Mac), and the enterprise edition includes the licensing for Office 2010 Professional Plus
· Single sign-on - Assuming your network is running Server 2008 Active Directory on-premises, you can configure Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) to achieve single sign-on, so that users can log on to the domain and be automatically authenticated to Office 365.
· Exchange Online - Users connect to Exchange Online via Outlook 2007 or 2010, with such features as Outlook Anywhere (RPC-over-HTTP) and Cached Exchange Mode. With Outlook 2010, you get all the new Exchange 2010 features, such as conversation view, ignore, MailTips, personal archive, protected voicemail, and voicemail preview.
· SharePoint Online -With Microsoft Office 2010 applications and SharePoint Online, two or more users can edit the same document at the same time. If you don’t have Office installed, you can use Office Web Apps to work with your documents in a Web browser.Your SharePoint sites work with all Microsoft Office 2010 applications, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, Outlook, InfoPath, SharePoint Designer, and SharePoint Workspace.
· Lync Online - Users can connect to Lync Online directly over the Internet (without having to be on the corporate network via VPN or RAS), but file transfer is not available in that situation.
· Security - Office 365 applications are accessed through 128-bit SSL/TSL encryption so that if a transmission is intercepted by someone without authorization, they won’t be able to read it. Antivirus signatures are kept up to date, and security measures are applied in accordance with the Microsoft Trustworthy Computing initiative.
Posted by - SUHAS R. KUDEKAR (MCTS - Microsoft Business Intelligence)
Learning Office 2010 + SharePoint 2010 + SQL Server 2008 R2
