Microsoft Ascending Into the Cloud with Office 365
Microsoft Corp is making a move against Google in the cloud-based office product department by moving away from their usual hybrid on-machine/on-web apps (e.g. Outlook vs Outlook Web) by making the jump with Office 365. The software giant has already started accepting applications for their new product’s beta today, and expect to ship internationally in 2011.
The Forbes Velocity blog brings us the scoop on this product’s potential,
Office 365 brings together the Office desktop software with Microsoft Web Apps, Sharepoint, Exchange and Lync. The move is in line with the company’s emphasis on a shift to a hybrid approach to cloud computing, with the combination of the existing Office software and the company’s Web-based applications (in contrast to Google’s cloud-based apps). “There’s a general assumption that when we talk about movement to the cloud, it’s a business model transformation,” said DelBene. But Microsoft believes differently. “It’s of the magnitude of a change to the graphical user interface.”
The company stressed the importance of targeting small business organizations, which, according to DelBene, have not typically been within the company’s reach; “From Gap to Glaxo Smith Klein,” and directly contrasting smaller businesses like restaurants and food co-ops.
To court small businesses, Microsoft is offering price plans that reflect a low cost. Small business plans for offices with less than 25 workers run as low as $6 per user per month. For those who already use Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Suite the price only rises to $10 per user per month; but the real kicker hits companies who use their desktop software at $24 per user per month.
In contrast, the Google office enterprise product is $50 per user per year.
Microsoft’s office products are certainly extremely powerful and their integration has led a great deal of productivity; but at the prices they’re quoting, they may have to show a marked improvement over what Google has done in the cloud already. It will also be interesting to see how they plan to hybridize their product suite with one another—one of the bigger effects of cloud-based office products is interoperability between apps: enabling workers move from desktop, to web, to mobile, without having to transform or modify their files as they go.
Microsoft Corp hopes to see the same popularity with Office 365 as they did with 2010 (claimed to be their most popular Office release yet.) Set for a ship date in 2011, we’ll be seeing soon enough how well their foray into cloud will serve them.
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