Microsoft Office 365 was launched this year in Australia on the 29th of June. It is Microsoft’s latest offering for the cloud environment, providing customers with Office productivity and collaboration services. In effect it is Microsoft’s offering to rival Gmail and Google Apps, which has established itself as the primary cloud based office suite.
Office 365 includes the Microsoft Office 2010 Professional Plus suite, Office Web Apps and hosted versions of Microsoft’s Server products (including Exchange Server, SharePoint Server, and Lync Server).
The MS Office 2010 Professional Plus suite is the only non-internet product within 365 and contains the standard applications: Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Onenote, Outlook, Publisher, Access, Lync, Sharepoint Workspaces, Info Path. Licencing of this product is based on continual monthly subscription of the Office 365 service. The silver lining is that Microsoft’s Office 2010 Professional suite is installable to up to 5 concurrent computers for an every individual licence. This will be a saving grace for those organisations that have multiple computers for one person.
The Microsoft Exchange Server Online gives you all the benefits of a standard in-house exchange server, but is hosted and managed in a cloud environment. The office 365 licence gives you a mailbox, with unlimited email addresses (within a single domain) and distribution groups. Backup of your mail however, is dependent on he various types of plans on offer.
Office Web Apps provides a single-user licence to access Word, Excel and Powerpoint via an internet browser. The applications are called light-weight apps and although they look similar to your standard office applications use web code to produce your documents. This product is great for kiosk environments, or staff that need to access their data using non-organisation related computers.
Microsoft and Telstra Partnership
In Australia, Microsoft has partnered with Telstra to bring you these services, the deal gives Telstra exclusive rights to resell the product in Australia. However the data is not currently hosted by Telstra, but off-shore in a huge data warehouse in Singapore. Telstra doubts this will change any time soon, but may introduce a premium service where sensitive data can be hosted within Australia. Telstra is also dictating the pricing in Australia, which seems to be substantially higher than overseas. There are however, some avenues to obtain overseas pricing, but it can be rather complex and possibly not worth the savings.
What are the benefit to SMEs in Australia
As with shoes, there is no one-size fits all. Similarly, no computer product is designed to fit all types of organisations. Although Office 365 has SME’s in mind, it will not be the best fit for every organisation in Australia. Australia suffers some unique challenges at the moment, specifically in the area of Internet pricing and speed. Currently we are going through a transition in small and medium business, where synchronised speeds of 6/6M or 10/10M are becoming available via Ethernet Over Copper (EOC). ADSL2 does not provide enough bandwidth for organisations of over five staff to conduct business fluidly over a cloud based offering. Having said that, organisations that are cloud-ready and do not have a need for cross-linking applications (i.e. CRM to Exchange data sharing), can benefit from the following:
- Lower upfront Office licencing fees
- Reduction of server hardware costs
- Licences based on users not computers
- Access to data from anywhere (with a internet connection)
- Enterprise grade data recovery
Pricing
Telstra are offering a range of pricing, however it would be worth speaking to a Microsoft Partner, as they may be able to do a little better than going direct. Here are some ballpark figures based on today’s pricing.
E3 (includes Exchange, Sharepoint, Office Web Apps, Office Professional Plus) $40.10pm per user
E2 Full package without Office Professional Plus $25.10pm per user
E1 Exchange and Sharepoint Online $15.70pm per user
P1 Exchange and Sharepoint Online $7.90pm per user (25 user limit non upgradeable)
Author: Adam Sheridan
Further Reading
Microsoft Office 365 available to Australian businesses of all sizes
Microsoft Office 365 hits Australia but data to be hosted in Singapore