9:46 PM  Shubham Yadav  No comments

Microsoft has launched the public beta of Office 365, a major
part of its "all in" strategy for cloud computing. Microsoft's
rivals in cloud include Google.
Microsoft has introduced the public beta of its Office 365, the
company's cloud-productivity offering and current best chance
for driving back the threat presented by Google Apps and similar
platforms. Microsoft has a habit of launching large-scale betas for
its products, the better to apparently weed out bugs and other
issues ahead of the general release.
The Office 365 beta will be available in 38 markets and 17
languages and joins Microsoft Office, SharePoint Online, Exchange
Online and Lync Online. The service's starting price is $6 per user
per month. In addition, Microsoft is launching the Office 365
Marketplace, with more than 100 productivity apps and 400
professional services.
Microsoft originally launched Office 365 in limited beta in October
2010, announcing at the time that general availability would
come sometime in 2011. The platform is essentially a rebranding
of the company's BPOS (Business Productivity Online Suite), which
bundled products such as SharePoint Online.
The software giant has also expressed interest in selling Office
365 as a customizable platform, allowing companies with simpler
needs to access fewer products. For the past several months,
Microsoft has been aggressive in pushing an "all-in" cloud
strategy, major components of which involve pushing a variety of
cloud-based IT services to corporations. The push comes just as
Microsoft faces competition not only from Google, which wants to
secure large IT contracts with corporations and government
entities, but also upstarts such as Salesforce.com, which have
taken to attacking many of Microsoft's current offerings as
outdated.
In virtually every public speech, for example, Salesforce CEO Marc
Benioff extols the enterprise IT future as mobile-centric and
constantly updated via the cloud. Despite having made its fortune
in desktop-centric software, however, Microsoft also seems to
realize the fundamentals underlying the tech industry are
undergoing a massive paradigm shift: hence Office 365, Windows
Azure and other platforms.
Microsoft is also partnering with Research In Motion to integrate
its cloud offerings into BlackBerry devices, with the latter
providing cloud-based BlackBerry service in support of Office 365.
RIM's BlackBerry Enterprise servers will connect "cloud to cloud"
with Microsoft's data centers to host Office 365 on users'
Blackberrys.
RIM's upcoming PlayBook tablet will be able to port and display
Office 365 data from any user's BlackBerry, through the BlackBerry
Bridge tethering service.
Meanwhile, Microsoft's battle with Google over large cloud
contracts has grown particularly intense in the past few months,
with the search-engine giant even suing the federal government
after the Department of the Interior allegedly denied its bid to
update an email and messaging system. Microsoft's BPOS-Federal
suite eventually won that contract, estimated at $59 million over
a five-year life cycle.
Last October, Microsoft announced a partnership with New York
City's government to provide municipal employees with access to
cloud-based Microsoft applications, in what many saw as a sort of
response to Google's agreement with the City of Los Angeles to
provide cloud services to its employees.

Posted in: Tech News