Microsoft Office 365 Beta

Microsoft has opened the tap on its cloud-based Office 365 and is now offering the service as a public beta for anyone to try out.

Available in 38 countries and in 17 languages, the new beta follows several months of limited testing among a couple thousand businesses that were able to kick the tires on the service. After the public beta, Office 365 will officially launch later this year.

Unveiled last October, Office 365 is Microsoft's attempt to offer businesses a cloud-based alternative to some of its traditional desktop and server products. The service combines Office Web Apps with hosted versions of Exchange and SharePoint as well as Microsoft’s Lync product, which provides the online communication and collaboration piece.

As such, Office 365 is designed to offer a gamut of features, including document creation and sharing, e-mail, IM, online meetings, and public Web sites. Microsoft is also including protection in the form of its enterprise ForeFront security client and is promising a 99.9 percent uptime for the entire service.

Once it officially launches, Office 365 will be offered as two different plans depending on the size of the company. Smaller businesses with 25 or fewer employees can pay $6 per person per month to receive Office Web Apps and the hosted versions of Exchange and SharePoint. Larger enterprises will have to choose one of four different plans at a cost of anywhere from $10 to $27 per person per month.

In addition to targeting the business world, Microsoft is reaching out to the educational market with five different plans geared toward faculty, staff, and students.

Also now available as a beta is the Office 365 marketplace. Designed to supplement Office 365, the marketplace tries to help businesses find apps and services offered by different Microsoft partners.

CNET reporter Josh Lowensohn took Office 365 for a spin last November to evaluate the service's pros and cons. He found that everything worked as advertised, but that, as things stood at the time, "Google Apps this is not."

· Pros

Provides cloud-based Exchange and Sharepoint Server. Gives end-users Office Web Apps with optional Office 2010 desktop integration. Also delivers Lync for Unified Communications and a rich Outlook Web App client. Excellent Exchange administration capabilities. Integrates with existing Active Directory environments. Big cost-savings potential.

· Cons

Lots of screens to navigate. SharePoint administration could be better organized. SharePoint settings include quirks. Needs more robust mobile integration. Microsoft needs to keep pricing models and SKUs simple and easy to understand.

· Bottom Line

Office 365 could mark the beginning of the end for traditional, on-premise Windows server administrators. With Exchange, SharePoint, Office and the unified communications service Lync Online, managing a Windows environment has never been easier or more centralized.

Administering Office 365, especially the Exchange and SharePoint components, still assumes a certain level of knowledge about Windows domains and system administration; it's not yet an "anyone can jump in and get started" offering, at least with an enterprise subscription.

Microsoft Office 365 services

When you first sign in to Office 365, some of your services may still be undergoing setup, in which case you’ll see a spinning wheel and a message indicating this. After setup is complete, you can access and manage the different services. The services that you see depend on what is included in your subscription.

• Exchange Online: Your Microsoft Exchange Online settings are configured with a standard set of default settings that enable you to create new mailboxes, send and receive email from your new domain, and access shared calendars.
• SharePoint Online: With SharePoint Online, you can start building your company’s team site for document sharing and collaboration. Additionally, you can create and publish a public-facing website for your company.
• Lync Online: Microsoft Lync Online provides instant messaging, web conferencing, and presence services for your company. Users can access these services by installing and using the Microsoft Lync 2010 desktop application to chat with other users, make PC-to-PC calls, and see if another user is online.
• Microsoft Office Desktop Apps: If you have a Microsoft Office Professional Plus subscription, and your users already use Microsoft Office 2007 or Microsoft Office 2010, you or your users can configure these desktop applications to work with their Office 365 email and team sites.