Microsoft Office is up in the clouds

Microsoft has brought cloud computing into the office environment with the release of a cloud version of its popular Office suite. Also included in the Office suite will be its flagship collaboration tool SharePoint Online and email via Exchange Online.

Up until now most cloud applications have been based around Web 2.o applications such as social media applications, blogs, forums etc. With the launch of its Office 365 suite, Microsoft has brought cloud computing to the typical blue collar worker.

The release is currently named Office 365 (presumably as a reference to the fact that it is available 365 days of the year). It’s entirely possible though that the name will be changed to something else.

It’s aimed at small to medium enterprises (SMEs), with costs running between $6 and $27.50 per user per month. The specific cost will depend on the applications that are required, and the storage requirements.

With their office applications hosted via the Internet, users can therefore access their usual Office applications using any device that can access the Internet. This includes iPads, smartphones, as well as the usual PCs, netbooks and laptops. The devices need to support ActiveSync.

It is estimated that customers of Office 365 could save up to 10% over more traditional desktop versions of the applications. The Office 365 cloud computing solution is particularly suitable for companies with between 1 to 25 staff that are required to collaborate with external partners. This could include marketing initiatives, or product development.

For any SMEs wishing to look into reducing software costs, which typically runs at around 15% of total IT expenditure, it could be extremely beneficial to investigate the latest cloud computing offering from Microsoft.

Microsoft enters the Smartphone market

There was much speculation as to whether Microsoft would make the leap into the smartphone market. It’s a market already dominated by huge name brands such as Apple with its iPhone, and Google with Android. However, as of October 21 2010, Microsoft have entered the smartphone market with the release of the Windows Phone 7, which was launched in Europe and Australasia.

Coming so late to the market represents a great risk for Microsoft. With two huge brands in the guise of Apple and Google already firmly established, it’s not going to be easy to squeeze market share. Perhaps its saving grace is the fact that Microsoft is also a huge brand in its own right, just not in the smartphone market. However, entering the smartphone market also represents a great opportunity. Microsoft will have to work very hard if it wants to become the third major player. To do that it will have to leapfrog HP with its Palm Pre and Blackberry.

It’s also refreshing to note that Microsoft haven’t simply copied Apple and Google with its user-interface, but instead have developed something completely different.

As should be fairly obvious, to be successful in the smartphone market isn’t entirely about just the phones. To be successful you need to have lots of great, cool apps! You also need social media integration so users can keep up to date with their friends on Twitter, Facebook and so on. So the challenge for Microsoft is to have a simple user-interface so that users can navigate their way around their smartphone applications, and a feature rich / well documented API (Applications Programming Interface) to allow developers to write all their cool applications for it.

The Windows Phone 7 application development will be based on Silverlight, Xbox New Architecture (XNA) and the .NET Compact Framework 4.0. These are all technologies that will be familiar to a Microsoft based developer.

It will also use Microsoft technologies such as Bing for its web searching, and have gaming integration with Xbox.

It will be critical for the success of the Windows Phone 7 that it comes with a multitude of applications at launch, and with many more scheduled to come soon after. The quality of those applications needs to be fantastically high, given the massive head start of the competition. It has a lot of catching up to do if it seriously wants to challenge Apple and Google, or rather leapfrog HP and Blackberry. Those applications need to be cheap (preferably free), stable, simple to use and brought to the market as soon as possible (but without breaking the stability already mentioned).

It will be interesting to see how Microsoft fares in such a highly competitive and well dominated market. The coming months should reveal if the decision to move into such a market was the right one or not.