IT information simplified for everyday people. News, How-To's and advice for anybody - not just tech heads.

Author - Josh T. IT Professional based in Brisbane, Australia.

Sunday, November 23, 2014

Office 365 - Your first step into the Cloud



Cloud Comping - You may have heard this buzzword thrown around for a couple of years now, but may still be wondering what its all about. To put it simply 'The Cloud'  means online services provided by companies that host products you would traditionally run on your home or office computers and servers.
Why is this good? Using a huge companies (like Microsofts) servers instead of your own means your applications are available from everywhere and are highly available all the while being much cheaper to run. This is in contrast to continually upgrading and maintaining your own infrastructure. 

So Office 365 - What is it and why would you want it for your home or business? 
Office 365 is a subscription service starting at about $6 per user/month. Microsoft will host all of your email, file share and collaboration tools. The traditional Office apps (Word, Excel, Powerpoint etc) are available though your web browser from any computer, tablet or smartphone or the service can connect to your local install of Office 2013. 365 Even has a nifty 'Office on Demand' feature which enables you to run a temporary install of Office on any compatible machine almost instantly (while the install is completed in the background). 

This product is attractive to small businesses not wanting the initial costs and ongoing maintenance costs of running email and file services, or purchasing expensive once off licences for the Office suite.  
Packages are also aimed at students and home users. When I was a student, I would have loved this service. The ability to not only access all of your assignments and documents from anywhere, but to edit your work using the unrivalled power of Microsoft Office. 


More info can be found at Microsoft's Offce 365 site:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-au/


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