Will Kelly

I’ve been following the run up to the Beta roll out of Microsoft Office365 and can say that Microsoft has indeed spoken in the web office arena. Their first salvo of the Office 365 Beta stays true to form to the Microsoft playbook of studying a market and its players before making its delayed entrance into a new market.

Office 365 Beta delivers Microsoft Exchange Online, Microsoft SharePoint Online, Microsoft Lync Online plus an external facing web site all within the cloud ideal for Small to Medium Businesses (SMBs) or even freelancers/independent consultants who have outgrown the backend infrastructure their local ISP provides.

Unlike its competitor, Google Apps for Business, Microsoft Office 365 does require some software to be installed locally, which should be no big thing for smaller organizations. Setting up the local clients was simple and users who maintain their own home PCs and email clients should have no problems.

Microsoft Exchange Online

I’ve long grown frustrated with my ISP’s email setup especially with my mobile devices so I migrated willkelly.com to Google Apps for Business a couple of months ago. Prior to the migration, I did consider Microsoft Exchange Online but was drawn to Google Apps because of all that the solution offered me. A backend to support my part-time freelance technical writing was a big part of my requirements.

The new Outlook Web App (OWA) that ships with Office 365 Beta is an evolutionary change over previous versions. It’s been hard for me to find anything nice to say about OWA until I tried it out in Office 365 where it is robust and easy to use unlike its previous incarnations.

If Office 365 were available when I made the move to Google Apps, the new OWA alone would have given me pause on my decision. I plan to test Office 365 extensively on my iPhone and iPad in the upcoming weeks to see if Office 365 may replace Google Apps for Business in the willkelly.com backend sometime in the future.

Microsoft SharePoint Online

Microsoft SharePoint has become ubiquitous inside the corporate enterprise but outside in the cloud my previous tries have been less than spectacular. When working on remote projects, I try to get all the participants out of using the email inbox for file management and version control whenever possible so the inclusion of Microsoft SharePoint Online in Office 365 really caught my attention.

I still remain a believer in the SharePoint platform even though I’ve seen some spectacular and even failed implementations during my time as a contract technical writer and hope to see Office 365 help SharePoint gain more traction with SMBs and independent workers.

The Office 365 Beta team site is well laid out and easy to use with the potential to customize it to meet project needs. It includes feature above and beyond what Google Sites (part of Google Apps for Business) offers. Most of all it enables the check in/check out of documents. My only exposure to SharePoint 2010 thus far is writing about the beta, so having the Team Site available could help keep my SharePoint skills sharp since I don’t always have access to the product.

A big test of the team site for me was to access it from my iPad. My requirement for access to a team site from mobile device are purely for reference – not even light editing – so Office 365 would work well for me in this instance. However, the Office 365 team site interface needs a bit more work to become touch screen friendly.

I plan to write another full-length post on just the Team Site so stay tuned.

Microsoft Lync Online

I wasn’t an early adopter of instant messaging but became sold on it when I had the opportunity to help implement IM and VoIP clients inside the enterprise and seen projects benefit from the new level of collaboration and interaction they offer geographically dispersed project teams.

It’s a worthy update to Office Communicator and a project team standardized on Office365 would have the benefits of a more solid state and standard IM and VoIP solution instead of cobbling together something from consumer offerings.

Microsoft Office 2010 and Office 365

Office 365 is designed to work with Office 2010 and Office 2010 Web Apps. While this version of Microsoft Office has been out for a while, not every organization is making the upgrade yet. Project teams that include freelancers and independents may not all be on the same version of Office.

With Office 365, you can access files you store on the team site directly from Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. This may take some initial setup and training depending on the project team but saving project documents from the depths of email inboxes will prove

External Web site

Office365 Beta also includes an external web site that feels like an afterthought when you put it up against the other offerings in the online suite. While I realize some SMBs aren’t web savvy, the external web site templates in Office 365 don’t seem to belong when you compare them against the templates available for the Team Site.

Parting Thoughts

Together, Microsoft Office 365 and Microsoft Office 2010 fit into my complementary model view for Office productivity applications even better than Google Cloud Connect acting as a bridge between Microsoft Office 2010 and Google Apps. Microsoft is off to a good start with Office 365 and I look forward to watching it leave Beta.

What are your first impressions about Microsoft Office 365 Beta?