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Follow UsQ: What does the Office 365 suite offer?
A: Although Office 365 is meant to function on a ‘pay per use' model, it offers the full suite of functionality the previous Office versions offered. The premium plan offers desktop apps (Excel, Word, Powerpoint, Outlook, etc), Office Web Apps, Office mobile apps, hosted email, web conferencing with Lync, Sharepoint Online to create team websites, Yammer for enterprise social networking and a public website with own domain name.
Q: What are the price points for Office 365 (for small businesses)?
| Hosted Email | Office 365 Small Business | Office 365 Small Business Premium | |
| Price | $4.00 user/month | $6.00 user/month OR $60 user/year | $15.00 user/month OR $150 user/year |
| Unique features | Hosted Email | Hosted Email, Office web apps, Lync, Sharepoint Online | Hosted Email, Office web apps, Lync, Sharepoint Online, Desktop versions of full Office Suite |
| Common features | Spam & Malware protection, Phone & Community support, 99.9% uptime guarantee | Spam & Malware protection, Phone & community support, 99.9% uptime guarantee | Spam & Malware protection, Phone & community support, 99.9% uptime guarantee |
| Max Users | Unlimited |
Q: What all features Office 365 Home Premium offer?
A: Core Office applications such as Word, Excel, Powerpoint and OneNote will be provided under the annual membership. Office Publisher and Office Access will also be offered, but these will not be available on Macs. Along with five licenses to work on PCs or Macs, five additional licenses will be provided to use Office 365 on mobile devices. However, these mobiles must be running Windows Phone OS 7.5 or higher to be able to use Office Mobile.
Q: What are the price points for midsize businesses?
| Plan E1 | Plan E1 + | Plan E3 | |
| Price | $8.00 user/month* | $15 user/month* | $20 user/month |
| Unique features | Up to 3000 sharepoint subsites | Office Mobile apps, Desktop versions of Office 2013 | Office Mobile apps, Desktop versions of Office 2013, advanced email, Sharepoint search, Advanced BI, Hosted voicemail |
| Common features | Office web apps, Lync, Sharepoint Online, Malware protection, Active Directory Management, Site Mailboxes | Office web apps, Lync, Sharepoint Online, Malware protection, Active Directory Management, Site Mailboxes | Office web apps, Lync, Sharepoint Online, Malware protection, Active Directory Management, Site Mailboxes |
| Max Users | Unlimited | Unlimited |
* All $ prices are in USD
Q: What are the price points for Office 365 for consumers?
A: Office 365 Home Premium is only available at one price point -an annual subscription of Rs. 4,199
Q: What if I only need a single license, which I can use offline?
A: A consumer can get a single PC license for Rs 5,499. This is not time-limited in any way, but is only allowed to be used for personal use. For Home & Business user, a single license will cost Rs 13,499, and this allows access to Outlook as well.
Q: What features differentiate Office 365 from desktop Office 2013?
A: - Office 2013 offers only 1 license per purchase, while Office 365 offers a maximum of 5+5 (mobile) licenses to be used per annum
- Office 365 offers core office apps, Microsoft Publisher and Access, hosted email. Office 2013 is offered in 3 different packages, of which only ‘Office professional 2013' offers all the same apps.
- Office 365 Home premium offers an additional 20GB of Skydrive space, for a total of 27 GB. This additional storage is not offered with Office 2013.
- Office on demand is only available with Office 365.
We spoke with Ramkumar Pichai (General Manager, Microsoft Office Division) to find out why and how traditional users can switch to the new platform.
Q: What are the key new features of the Office 365 that will convince traditional users to purchase it?
Pichai: Here are 3 reasons why they should:
1) The Enterprise-proven solution - With Microsoft, businesses can deliver the right set of tools for the right users-all with appropriate layers of security and compliance technologies. Microsoft Office 365 offers a 99.9 percent uptime guarantee with a financially backed SLA.
2) Consistent Productivity Experience - Businesses can confidently share information with their customers and colleagues knowing that Office documents are commonly accepted inside and outside their organization. Also, businesses can access their content virtually anywhere across PC, phone, and browser.
3) Delivering the cloud on your terms - Microsoft offers licensing options designed for organizations of all size so that businesses can select only the features they need and control their costs. Also, Microsoft provides the flexibility to build a hybrid solution so employees can share information on premise or in the cloud.
Q: Are there any special-priced offerings of Office 365 for students?
Pichai: Office 365 for Education, a cloud-based suite that includes Microsoft Office desktop applications, Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and Lync Online. It would provide educators with tools to create anytime, anywhere learning opportunities across multiple devices in addition to email, calendars, Microsoft Office Web Apps (Online Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote), video and online meetings plus advanced document creation features for curriculum planning and student projects.
Q: How does Office On Demand work? Will a local version of the Office app be installed on any system if this feature is used? Or will it be ‘streamed' to the host system through a browser?
Pichai: When you use Office on Demand, the applications are streamed to the PC you're using as you need them. Office on Demand doesn't get installed. There's no offline access to Office on Demand and there won't be any shortcuts or typical signs of installation left on the computer. If you use Office on Demand repeatedly on the same device, you'll notice that performance improves over time. That's because your computer caches applications that you've previously used. If at some point you want to remove all of the Office on Demand performance cache, simply uninstall the Office on Demand add-in using your Programs and Features option from the Control Panel. Office on Demand is available from the Quick Launch panel within your SkyDrive library.
Using Office on Demand from your SkyDrive Quick Launch is a great choice when you're:
- On a PC that you don't use regularly (you don't want to use up one of your 5 permissible subscription licenses, for example)
- On a PC where you don't have admin rights to perform an installation
- On a PC where your IT administrator has disabled your ability to manage your installations.