Office 365 Updated for 2013

Wes Miller analyzes and writes about Microsoft’s security, identity management, and systems management technologies. Before joining Directions on Microsoft, Wes... more

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.

As of early 2013, Office 365 will include the following Microsoft-hosted services:

Exchange Online, powered by Exchange Server 2013
SharePoint Online, powered by SharePoint Server 2013
Lync Online, powered by Lync Server 2013
Project Online, powered by Project 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 yet match servers deployed on-premises feature for feature, but each version has reduced the feature gap. 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.

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