Office 365 to Update Online Services

Contributing Analyst: Don Retallack

Office 365 is a planned product line that combines cloud services such as Exchange Online e-mail with subscription licenses to the Office desktop software. Like the Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) that it will replace in 2011, Office 365 could reduce IT costs and free up personnel for business-specific tasks. Office 365 could also interest IT organizations that want a single, predictable, per-user bill for their collaboration software. However, Office 365 also requires organizations to trust Microsoft and their ISPs with critical infrastructure.

New Packaging for Next BPOS

Office 365, formerly code-named Union, will include the next versions of the following Microsoft-hosted services:

• Exchange Online, built on Exchange Server
• SharePoint Online, built on SharePoint Server
• Communications Online, built on Communications Server (the next versions of which will be called Lync Online and Lync Server, respectively).

Each of these three services comes in two editions: A multitenant Standard edition in which customers share hardware, and a Dedicated edition which runs on hardware dedicated to a specific customer and delivers more features that the Standard edition. Each service can be bought stand-alone, but currently they are often purchased together in BPOS, a suite that also includes Live Meeting Web conferencing.