On June 28th, Microsoft released Office 365 – their office software as a service product. I previously blogged about the product in mid-April - http://tfl09.blogspot.com/2011/04/getting-started-with-office-365.html. During the latter stages of the beta, Microsoft did continue to tweak the product but what they released is more or less what I blogged about in April.
Network World has an article on the product which examines how Office 365 stacks up against Google’s Google Docs. It concludes that Office 365 “will likely attract a big audiencef, since a huge number of businesses already use Microsoft products already.
Office 365 is sold on a range of price points – or plans. The cost ranged from US$6 to US$27 per month per user, depending on what services you contract for. This compares with Google App’s price point of US$50/year.
I like Office 365 and have enjoyed using it during the beta. I recently did a neat demo with it, talking from Luxembourg (at a client site) to two pals – one in Singapore the other in Thailand. All of us were on wireless LANs and the performance was darn good.
The Network World article notes that MS did not address any of the limitations of Offfice 365, but that said – the product as it stands is not bad! I look forward to seeing a lot more hard evidence about the overall quality of the product as we start to roll it out.
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