Microsoft Office 365 Launches: Where Office Meets the Cloud

PCMag.Com - Microsoft formally announced its Office 365 suite of online applications this morning, with CEO Steve Ballmer describing the services as "where Microsoft Office meets the cloud." Ballmer talked about the productivity businesses have gained from using Microsoft Office and said businesses wanted more tools for collaboration, instant messaging, real-time virtual meetings, simultaneous editing of documents, shared calendars, and creating websites in SharePoint. Collaboration is critical to business growth and needs to be available to all businesses, from global enterprise to startups, Ballmer said. But today's announcements were focused on small and medium size businesses.He noted that these businesses need an edge, but one that doesn't require big capital investments or IT sites. Kirk Koenigsbauer, a corporate vice president, started a demo by starting with a SharePoint team site, picking a document, and showing how multiple people could open and edit the text. He did this both with the traditional client version of Microsoft Word and with the Web version of Word, showing how the formatting was consistent across the two versions. Koenigsbauer then showed connections to Office 365 from Windows Phone 7, which has an Office "hub," and it included uploading a photo from the phone to a OneNote document. He added that Office 365 would work from iPhone and Android phones as well. He then demoed a Web conference, which included video connections, PowerPoint sharing, whiteboards, etc., all with real-time collaboration. He also displayed a website created in SharePoint, filled with gadgets for things such as adding contact forms and videos.    More