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Microsoft Announces Web-Based Office365

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the case-of-the-me-toos dept.

suraj.sun writes "Aiming to bolster its hosted software for businesses, Microsoft announced today that it is adding Web-based versions of Office to its collection of hosted software for business, Office365. It will also offer traditional Office as a subscription-based service. Microsoft is pricing the service as low as $6 per user per month, though that version includes only the Web-based versions of Office."

22 of 210 comments (clear)

  1. "Best with IE" or not? by grub · · Score: 3, Interesting


    It isn't mentioned in the article, but does anyone know if Office365 "works best" with IE or is it browser-agnostic? For example, Microsoft's Outlook Web Access is quite decent when accessed with IE but with Firefox or Safari it's not nearly as nice.

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    1. Re:"Best with IE" or not? by Tablizer · · Score: 5, Funny

      does anyone know if Office365 "works best" with IE or is it browser-agnostic?

      If you run it on anything other than IE, it will take 365 days to load. Hence, the name.
         

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    2. Re:"Best with IE" or not? by hairyfeet · · Score: 4, Funny

      This brings up something I've been wondering for awhile: What moron killed Works, and why? Yeah I hated the Works file format as much as the next guy, but it was a great way for them to push product to the Walmart crowd and OEMs. If anybody there had a brain they'd take Word, Powerpoint, and Maybe OneNote, and package that as "MSFT Office Home" and push that in the low end market and to OEMs instead of more "Web 2.0" crap. Lets be honest folks, this is probably gonna bomb, and bomb hard. Those that need MS Office are probably just gonna pick up a retail edition, and those in the low end without Works being supplied by OEMs is probably gonna end up with Open Office. from a company standpoint this is just further proof in my opinion that Ballmer is to MSFT what the Pepsi guy was to Apple and needs a good firing.

      And slightly OT, but can we change the "Bill Gates Borg" icon please? yes Bill was good at the "evil Nerd Genius" thing, but has been gone for ages. I would like to propose a BETTER icon, which I bet most here would agree is a better description of MSFT currently: Steve Ballmer with his tongue sticking out with a propeller beanie and a "I heart Apple!" T-shirt. This would better describe the current direction (which is pretty much "We can be as cool and hip as Apple! Yes we can! Yes we really can! STOP LAUGHING AT ME"!) and the "me too!" attitude at MSFT, not to mention the piss poor image the CEO brings to the table, better than the MSFT Gates Borg. Hell at least let the guys at /. vote in a poll on it! Who's with me? Down with Gates Borg, up with Ballmer Beanie!

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  2. Its website by neo00 · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://office365.microsoft.com/

    1. Re:Its website by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      https://docs.google.com/

    2. Re:Its website by nschubach · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Just the link alone makes me wonder... Does MS have a secure site for office365?

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  3. Re:That is low by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    $6 / mo = $72 / year. Considering Office Professional costs close to $400, this is basically a subscription model. Yes, the $6/mo is cheaper than $400 / 5 years.

    If $6 / mo is *expensive*, then I'm not sure how people manage payroll.

  4. Strange Name by Nerdfest · · Score: 3, Funny

    I assume the next version will be Office 366. How long have I been asleep?

  5. 'Only' the Web-based versions of Office ? by lbalbalba · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Guess that covers Word, Powerpoint, Excel, Access. So what's the rest, then ? Visio ? Exchange ?

  6. Surprised it's taken this long: by Mongoose+Disciple · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm surprised it's taken this long to get this kind of offering and price point out -- it's seemed clear for a while that Microsoft would like to grow a presence in the "software as a service" space.

    1. Re:Surprised it's taken this long: by Fnkmaster · · Score: 4, Informative

      LOL. A little tidbit of history that may not be widely known or at least not widely remembered - Microsoft has actually developed web-based versions of its Office product on at least 2 previous occasions, perhaps more. These products never saw the light of day, and for various reasons, strategic and political chief among them, the projects were axed, developers reassigned, and code tossed away then restarted some time later when somebody decided that NOW the time was ripe for a web-based office.

      Amusingly enough, I believe one of these efforts was part of what was originally termed the ".NET initiative" and was called "Office.NET" at least as a working title - back when .NET meant anything and everything, before they decided that .NET actually was the class library and VM for their C# language. See, for example, this article from back in 2002.

      Remember what a confused mess the .NET initiative was? It's truly amazing how much Microsoft has had its head up its ass over the last decade. Windows 7 is the first decent product they've put out in *years*.

      A friend of mine from college, a very bright guy, was one of the project managers on the Office.NET project before it got axed. Anyway, he was so frustrated by his experience with this project that I believe it was in part his reason for leaving Microsoft.

      So... it seems like they finally followed through on this, but it's not like the idea just occurred to them recently. No, it's more likely they only decided to bring it to market now because of the cloud computing hype and the fact that the traction of OpenOffice.Org and other Office alternatives has them scared shitless (of course, OpenOffice has just fragmented itself and will probably manage to squander the traction they've finally obtained after all these years of effort).

  7. Re:That is low by anUnhandledException · · Score: 4, Informative

    When one consider that Office is $400 - $500 per license it is "half off".

    Also I think it is more aimed at small business.

    Fortune 500 can drop $500 a license per user no big deal.

    A startup could preserve capital by paying $72 per year.

  8. Office386 ! by Tablizer · · Score: 4, Funny

    I misread the title as "Office386", and was thinking, "Boy, Microsoft really is falling behind the curve".

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  9. Bill Gates quote by Tablizer · · Score: 3, Funny

    Gates: "365 days a year otta be enough for anybody."

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    Table-ized A.I.
  10. Re:For $6 a month by SudoGhost · · Score: 4, Insightful

    While that may or may not be true, I don't need to post as an Anonymous Coward to tell you that Office alone is overpriced for what it does, especially when there is a viable alternative for free, let alone this 'subscription' crap.

  11. IE? nah, just Silverlight by vlueboy · · Score: 4, Informative

    Hotmail is controlled by MS. IIRC, about a year ago they started displaying PPS (and maybe DOC) attachments in-browser. They did so while promoting the "works best with Silverlight... install" here.

    So they have gathered enough statistics on Silverlight and any failures in display that always come from end-user feedback. Now, they are ready to entice corporations. The corps will have to approve Silverlight for their outdated browsers, or be faced with the same "degraded" fallback interfaces that result in reduced productivity that you already noted with Outlook's non-native execution.

  12. Server Error in '/' Application. by vlueboy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Ouch. That link is slashdotted or something, so all we got is that error.
    Which was great, decent reminder that MS hosting all your office documents on the cloud reduces your company's effective ownership of the files. One day IT blocks the domain inadvertently, or it gets DDoS'd by anonymous, or the local spyware kills it in your hostfile, or all the phones and internet go down at the company because of a cut cable... so then what do the managers do to access their files?

    Cloud indeed.

  13. Re:That is low by recoiledsnake · · Score: 3, Interesting

    You forgot to factor in the 25GB Exchange online mailboxes and Sharepoint Online for each user that doesn't come with Office Professional.

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  14. Imagine the board decision meeting by SpaghettiPattern · · Score: 3, Funny

    Imagine the board decision meeting.

    Seattle moderator: Right, we wanna shov... sell our Office sofware [sic.] to the wider public and we need a name. You John?
    John: Well, how's about we name it Office %VERSION%++
    SM: Very good indeed, John... You Mark?
    Mark: It's for the people ... which are alive ... eh lets name it "Live ........
    (Several hours pass)
    SM: (Yelling) Oh for god's sake, we can't name everything 360, can we!
    Some nobody: (Very meek voice) 365 maybe? For the year, you know? OK, I'll get my coat.
    (Several more hours pass)
    SM: (Desperate) OK, 365 it is.
    Another nobody: (Very softly) And what about leap years?.

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    I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
  15. The Numbers by stimpleton · · Score: 4, Informative

    From TFA :"$27 per user per month"

    I work for an New Zealand small - medium company. The stacks up thus:

    Option 1. 20 seat Office 2010 enterprise license - $13,000 per annum
    Option 2. Office 365. 20 x $27/month x $NZ Exchange = $8484 per annum.
    Option 3. 20 OEMS with hardware purchase(assume 4 year cycle): $2500 per annum

    PS: US readers will think I have these numbers grossly wrong. I havent. The cost of doing business in NZ is expensive. Option 1 could drop in price. I have already had an email stating this could change as they are keen to always "find a best fit for an organisation".

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  16. Leap Year Fail by Infonaut · · Score: 3, Funny

    They're going to be so screwed when the service goes down for an entire day every four years. Ah, but then they'll introduce Office365+.

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  17. 1.2 GB active x control by codepunk · · Score: 3, Funny

    All you need to do is install this 1.2 GB active x control. Or you can opt for the 1.6 GB active x professional version that includes "web bob" and "clippy".

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