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Office 365

Imagine a world where you can access all your office data 365 days of the year from any computer or smart phone with an internet connection.

That’s the idea behind Office 365, a new office suite announced by Microsoft, which will save files to the cloud as well as copy them to hard disk drives on individual computers. The service, aimed at small to medium sized enterprises with up to 50 employees, is intended to make data management easy for businesses by providing access to data from anywhere.

It is not designed for data backup, although if it had been in existence just a few months ago when the Canterbury earthquake hit Christchurch, it might have saved hundreds if not thousands of business owner’s unnecessary headaches. Research shows nearly half of businesses who lose all their data are no longer in business two years later.

What's online?

Office 365 includes online versions of Microsoft Outlook, still the most popular email program used by businesses, as well as Microsoft Excel, OneNote and Word.

It is different to Microsoft’s offering to Hotmail and Windows Live account holders, who can use stripped down versions of Microsoft Office online called Microsoft Office Web Apps and store their files in up to 25GB of free online storage.

Email, spread sheets, note taking and word processing files created in Microsoft Office 365 are stored online on Microsoft’s servers in Singapore.

Subscribe to Office 365

An installation of Office 365 can either stand alone, for a monthly subscription fee of $9.25+GST, or work in conjunction with a version of Microsoft Office already installed on the user’s machine’s hard disk drive.

Office 365 includes the ribbon user interface introduced in Microsoft Office 2007 and replicated in the Windows 7 operating system and then Microsoft Office 2010. The ribbon groups related groups of tasks together in a series of tabs at the top of the application’s window, rather than provide drop down style menus as was common in the past.

Office 365 is designed for the layman so that anyone with basic computer skills can add and remove users as the workforce waxes and wanes. It would be ideal for businesses, say, in the agricultural and horticultural sectors that have seasonal workforces.

Simple, but effective

Office 365 also includes simple, but effective, tools allowing businesses to design and build their own website. Templates for all the usual components of such a site can be used and modified to build an engaging website. No knowledge of any programming language is necessary, again just basic computer literacy is needed.

All applications, and files, can be accessed on any personal computer, whether a desktop or laptop, as well as smartphone, such as the Windows Phone 7.

Microsoft, which announced the details around Office 365 in April, said it would invite selected customers to trial the software before making it commercially available soon.

While Office 365 is aimed at small businesses who don’t necessarily employ an information technology specialist, but your technology advisor could offer support.