Microsoft Office 365
Encyclopedia
Microsoft Office 365 is a commercial software plus services
Software plus services
Software plus Services combines hosted services with locally running software in a variation on cloud computing. Such composite applications combine traditional software with remote services to provide a consistent user experience across devices and form factors.There are various reasons for this...

 offering a set of products from Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...

 Corporation, with the initial plan including a Professional subscription (for organizations of 25 and smaller) and an Enterprise subscription (for organizations with more individuals). Office 365 was announced in the autumn of 2010, and was made available to the public on 28 June 2011.

Office 365 includes the Microsoft Office
Microsoft Office
Microsoft Office is a non-free commercial office suite of inter-related desktop applications, servers and services for the Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems, introduced by Microsoft in August 1, 1989. Initially a marketing term for a bundled set of applications, the first version of...

 suite of desktop applications and hosted versions of Microsoft's Server products (including Exchange Server
Microsoft Exchange Server
Microsoft Exchange Server is the server side of a client–server, collaborative application product developed by Microsoft. It is part of the Microsoft Servers line of server products and is used by enterprises using Microsoft infrastructure products...

, SharePoint Server, and Lync Server), delivered and accessed over the Internet, in effect, the next version of Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS)
Microsoft Online Services
Microsoft Online Services is Microsoft's hosted software offering and a component of their Software plus services strategy. Microsoft Online Services are hosted by Microsoft and sold "with" Microsoft partners....

.

Microsoft Exchange Online

Microsoft Exchange Online
Microsoft Exchange Server
Microsoft Exchange Server is the server side of a client–server, collaborative application product developed by Microsoft. It is part of the Microsoft Servers line of server products and is used by enterprises using Microsoft infrastructure products...

 is an email, calendar and contacts solution delivered as a cloud service, hosted by Microsoft. The service is based on Microsoft Exchange server and offers 25 GB of email storage per user. In addition, Exchange online offers users personalized calendars and contacts with sharing capability and 99.9% reliability in online secure back-up.
Exchange ActiveSync
Exchange ActiveSync
Exchange ActiveSync is an XML-based protocol that communicates over HTTP designed for the synchronization of email, contacts, calendar, tasks and notes from a messaging server to a mobile device...

 provides mobile connectivity to Exchange services and mobile email applications.

Microsoft SharePoint Online

Microsoft SharePoint Online
Microsoft SharePoint
Microsoft SharePoint is a web application platform developed by Microsoft. First launched in 2001, SharePoint is typically associated with web content management and document management systems, but it is actually a much broader platform of web technologies, capable of being configured into a wide...

 is a collaboration, sharing, and document editing service using internal and external 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.

Office Professional Plus

Microsoft Office Professional Plus
Microsoft Office
Microsoft Office is a non-free commercial office suite of inter-related desktop applications, servers and services for the Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems, introduced by Microsoft in August 1, 1989. Initially a marketing term for a bundled set of applications, the first version of...

 in Office 365 provides the same client software as the Office Professional Plus product available through Microsoft Volume Licensing.

Office Professional Plus in Office 365 has month-to-month, per-user licensing. It can be installed by users from Microsoft Online Services. 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.

Office Web Apps

Office Web Apps
Office Web Apps
Microsoft Office Web Apps is a web-based version of the Microsoft Office productivity suite. It includes the web-based versions of Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, and Microsoft OneNote. The web applications allow users to access their documents directly from anywhere within a...

 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.

Plans

Office 365 is available in a number of different plans aimed at different needs and market segments, providing different sets of features at different price points. These include:
  • Office 365 for enterprise: For businesses with internal or partner-supported IT staff and resources. Add on plans are available for information workers with dedicated PCs and kiosk workers (such as baristas or physicians) who share a PC and need only Web-based access.
  • Office 365 for small business: Designed for businesses without dedicated IT staff or resources.
  • Office 365 for education: Designed for schools and a replacement for the Office Live@edu
    Live@edu
    Microsoft Live@edu is a free suite of hosted Microsoft services and applications that is intended for educational needs.The Live@edu program provides education institutions with a set of hosted collaboration services, communication tools, and mobile, desktop, and web-based applications, as well as...

    service.


Microsoft has said that Office 365 will receive updates on a 90-day cycle.

Further reading

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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