Office 365 vs SkyDrive

Microsoft has released an update fro its online collaboration suite Office 365, which includes 30 new features. The most important of them are support for Windows Phone 7.5, opportunity to edit documents stored in SharePoint Online on Windows Phone, Lync client for Windows Phone and Mac, ability to integrate Sharepoint Online with third-party applications (via SharePoint Business Connectivity Services), improved file uploading and sharing tools. Microsoft also made Office 365 available in 22 new countries including Argentina, South Africa and Taiwan. Together with Office 365 its free mass-market alternative SkyDrive has been updated. It also features the new HTML5-uploader an slick file sharing (that we have already mentioned). These new features, and the new file management tools are shown in this video:

It seems, Microsoft is already feeling confidence in its mobile future. According to The Daily report, in the 1st half of 2012 Microsoft will release Mobile Office for the competing platform - iPad. Of course, iPad is very popular among business users and Microsoft can easily dramatically increase its incomes by selling mobile Word and Excel for the iPad at $10 (the planned price). But from the political point of view, Microsoft is not interested in making iPad even more attractive product, because it competes with the upcoming Windows 8 tablets. However, after the intention of HP and several other manufacturers to support Windows 8, Microsoft is not afraid of iPad any more. As expected, the MS Office for iPad will be significantly stripped-down compared to the desktop version and will be integrated with the online service Office 365.

Remember how Mark Benioff laughed at Microsoft's anti-advertising campaign? It turns out that Microsoft also can do similar things. A few days ago Google launched the advertising campaign that encourages users to switch from draconian email systems and their “embarrassingly outdated addresses” over to GMail, which features such niceties as free phone calls and video chat. For this campaign the video (see above) was created. You can see the red link to this video in your GMail-account. But Microsoft, whose Hotmail service is obviously one of the targets of Google's campaign, isn’t keeping quiet. Today another video hit the Web:

For now the SaaS suite Microsoft Office 365 includes e-mail server Exchange Online, portal Sharepoint Online, document editors Office Web Apps and communication server Lync Online. But Microsoft has plans to expand this suite and make it the one-stop-service for small and medium business. The BlackBerry Office 365 module has been already announced. It will provide Blackberry users the push-access to Office 365 data. Also, we have previously reported about the plans to add MS Dynamics CRM Online and the future MS Dynamics ERP to Office 365. And according to the latest (insider) information in late 2012 or early 2013 the suite will be expanded by the online version of project management solution MS Project and the diagram editor MS Visio.

Today Steve Ballmer at the press-event in New York officially announced the launch of the cloud solution Office 365. And it's nice that it becomes available globally. Office 365 is offered in 21 languages (English, Br Portuguese, Chinese (simplified, traditional), Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Spanish, Swedish, Romanian, and Russian) and 40 countries (US, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong SAR, Hungary, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Romania, Russia, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Trinidad and Tobago, and the UK).

Next week Microsoft will officially launch its online office suite Office 365, and of course, the major competitors, Google and Box.net, want to spoil this party. First, they have integrated their solutions. Now Box.net users can edit any stored document in the Google Docs online editors. In addition, they can (in just one click) create new documents in Box.net folders by opening Google Docs apps. Recall that Box.net also features the similar integration with Zoho Docs, so now users will have a choice. Box.net CEO, Aaron Levy, says that he played with the beta version of Office 365 and that it’s lacking the power and functionality of the bunch Box + Google Docs.

Microsoft has opened its online Office 365 for public beta testing and there are already first reviews, so we can already judge of how this service will justify its label "Google Apps killer". Recall, Office 365 includes online versions of Exchange, Sharepoint, Lync and the office suite Office Web Apps. So the functionality of Office 365 is even better than in Google Apps. But "killing Google Apps" hardly possible because these are quite different products. Office 365 is more appropriate for medium and large companies, who used to work in Microsoft-oriented IT infrastructure, that already have an IT administrator who knows Active Directory, Exchange and Sharepoint settings. Without such administrator you can't manage Office 365, it's not so simple as Google Apps.

SkyDrive, Microsoft’s online storage service continues to take on Dropbox and add support for new platforms. Following the applications for Windows Phone and iPhone, Microsoft has released the desktop client for Windows and Mac OS (OS X Lion). Also, the SkyDrive's mobile interface has been optimized for iPad tablets. SkyDrive for desktop works in the usual way - it creates a folder on your computer and all the files that you copy to this folder are automatically synced with your online account, as well as with your other computers or mobile devices that are running SkyDrive. And if in the online account you create a shared folder for your work-group, the service will be continuously syncing files between the computers of co-workers.

This year, marketers in Enterprise 2.0 companies haven't prepared  well for the April Fools' Day, perhaps because it fell on Sunday. The only diligent company was Google, that released several April 1 products. One of them - is GMail Tap - the new app for mobile GMail, which allows to quickly type text with just two buttons - dot and dash (watch video above). At the same time Microsoft, which recently was very productive in funny videos, at that time only unveiled the new interface for the online file storage and sharing service SkyDrive - SkyCMD. It allows you to manage your files using the classic DOS-syntax and the command line:

So, Microsoft finally lost its fear of rival mobile platforms. Previously, the company launched the number of applications for the iPhone/iPad and even is working on the full-featured mobile Office for the iPad. And now it decided to make happy the Android users. Of course, it started with the apps for which being cross-platform is more important - the file storage SkyDrive and notebook/organizer OneNote. From now any files (including OneNote notebooks) can be synchronized between your Android-smartphone and your online SkyDrive account. However, there is a catch. While SkyDrive for Android - is completely free, the mobile OneNote app - is free only for up to 500 notes. After reaching this limit, you'll have to pay $4.99 (one-time fee) - and the restriction will be removed.

Microsoft continues to troll Google services with funny videos. At this time, they take on Google Docs. According to the scenario a group of young co-workers wants to creat a document and starts working on it in Google Docs. Naive guys don't know that Google Docs are only suitable for simple tasks and drawing a planetary system in Google Docs - is impossible. But it's possible in Microsoft SkyDrive. Even not in the Skidrive itself (it also can't do such complicated formatting) but in the desktop MS Office, that can edit the document simultaneously with the online SkyDrive editor. Note that Microsoft has removed the title Windows Live Office, which was used from the start to refer the online office, and now is using SkyDrive (that formerly was used to refer only the file storage).

After the recent Microsoft's announcement that it's working on Office for iPad (by the way, today OneNote has become available for iPad), today's launch of the SkyDrive app for iPhone is not very surprising. From now the SkyDrive users can access their files on the iPhone, open them, share to others, create new folders and synchronize files to the online account. The same application has appeared for Windows Phone 7.5 (watch the video below). And judging by some vacancies that Microsoft posts on the job-sites, the company is already working on the SkyDrive version for Android. Recall, SkyDrive offers free 25GB of cloud storage, which is much larger than its main competitors: Box.net, DropBox and Google Docs.

Microsoft has released an update fro its online collaboration suite Office 365, which includes 30 new features. The most important of them are support for Windows Phone 7.5, opportunity to edit documents stored in SharePoint Online on Windows Phone, Lync client for Windows Phone and Mac, ability to integrate Sharepoint Online with third-party applications (via SharePoint Business Connectivity Services), improved file uploading and sharing tools. Microsoft also made Office 365 available in 22 new countries including Argentina, South Africa and Taiwan. Together with Office 365 its free mass-market alternative SkyDrive has been updated. It also features the new HTML5-uploader an slick file sharing (that we have already mentioned). These new features, and the new file management tools are shown in this video:

When the MS Office Web Apps launched, only  the Excel Web App allowed to collaborate on online documents in real time. Now the trick is also available in the online Word. Though it's not so cool as in Google Docs. To let co-editors see your changes you have to click the Save button, then co-editors will see the notification in the status bar, then click Save and only then see your changes. There is no chat / comments like in Google Docs, but at least you can see who is currently editing every part of the document. Meanwhile co-authoring in the online Word works only in the free Windows Live Office (SkyDrive) and is not yet available in Office 365.