Office 365 now pay to play

Microsoft has launched its Office 365 cloud offering commercial in SA with prices starting at R46,50/user a month.

Added by Craig Wilson on 28 June 2012.
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Melanie Botha

Microsoft has announced the commercial launch of its cloud productivity service, Office 365, in SA. Depending on the configuration users opt for, the service pricing starts at R46,50 per user per month and goes up to R170,75 for the full suite.

Office 365 was launched in SA in November 2011 and has been available as a free trial since then.

Melanie Botha, Microsoft SA’s marketing and operations leader, says users get new software features and upgrades as soon as they are available and costs that would traditionally be capital intensive can now be spread over time as operating expenses. This, she believes, makes it compelling for small and medium-sized businesses.

The subscription includes online versions of Exchange, SharePoint and Lync for e-mail, document management and unified communications. Certain subscription plans also add Office Pro Plus that provides offline capabilities for Word, Excel, Outlook and the rest of the Office desktop suite.

“Moving to the cloud with Office 365 doesn’t require a business to change the way it works because the service is based on familiar productivity tools … such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and Access,” Botha says.

“Employees get new ways to work together with ease, on virtually any device or mobile phone, and businesses get the reliability, security and IT controls they need in the cloud, even without dedicated IT staff.”

Businesses can try Office 365 for free for 30 days.  — (c) 2012 NewsCentral Media

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  • http://twitter.com/ConexionPoint Michael Curry

    I’m sure this story is going to get plenty of bashing for its always a love or hate attitude towards Microsoft. Personally I have to tell you Microsoft got its act together with the Lync side of the offering. We use the hosted version of Lync from WorkSpace and it’s unbelievable how easy this stuff is. My favorite feature is voice mail transcribing. Having a actual transcribed written copy of a voice mail message in your email is the coolest feature in the world. Great job Microsoft and keep those features coming. I’m sure the folks at Cisco, AVAYA and ShoreTel are thinking about you hourly.

  • Thomas

    We’ve been using office 365 for some time now and it works great. Being a small company you may need some assistance migrating to the system. Checkout the Microsoft office 365 marketplace for a cloud partner or checkout http://www.pursuitsolutions.co.za/server/office365.html they got us going without any hassles.

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