Office 365

Office 365 is a set of service plans that combines the current versions of Microsoft-hosted online services (such as Exchange Online Standard) with optional subscription licenses to Office Professional Plus. Office 365 replaced the Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS), which offered similar services, but did not include any Office desktop software.

As of Feb. 2013, Office 365 is based on the following Microsoft-hosted services for new customers and customers who have been migrated:

• Exchange Online, powered by Exchange Server 2013
• SharePoint Online, powered by SharePoint Server 2013
• Lync Online, powered by Lync Server 2013.

For most customers, the services are offered in multitenant configurations, in which customers share physical servers and other resources. For large government and commercial customers, Microsoft also offers hosting on hardware dedicated to the customer.

Office 365 enables organizations to hand over deployment, management, and security patching to Microsoft for services such as e-mail, freeing up IT personnel for more important tasks. Office 365 cannot completely match servers deployed on-premises feature for feature, but this version significantly reduces the feature gap for all three services. Office 365 also offers advantages that competitors such as Google or Zoho will find hard to match, such as easier migration from on-premises software and lower user training costs.