Microsoft Following The Herd?

Microsoft has entered the Cloud market providing anytime access to its Office applications when connected to the internet. With “Office 365 on Demand” calendars and emails will be available on the go allowing you to share files and manage teams from anywhere. Additionally, files are automatically saved online regardless of where you access them.

Office 365 can be installed on up to 5 different devices and it comes with a standard desktop version that allows you to work off line. The moment you regain internet connection your work is automatically synced.

Although Office 365 is targeted predominately at business users it will be available to home and education users. Payment for home users is relatively simple with a choice of a one of annual payment of £79.99 or monthly instalments of £7.99. For business users it’s a little more complex. Small business between 1 and 10 employees are charged £8.40 per user per month.  For businesses with 10 to 250 employees you will be charged £9.80 per user per month. For those above 250 employees you can obtain the slightly more expensive enterprise licence providing access for 50,000 users.

So is it value for money? Research has shown that businesses, particularly enterprises, can pay as much as 44% more through Office 365 that purchasing Office 2013 Professional Plus. Likewise for the home user a strong case can be made for buying Office Home and Business over Office 365.

The new software has also drawn criticism in that it can only operate on Windows 7 or 8, does not work with OS X and is incompatible with tablets. People also point to the fact the 5 installs is good but all five devices have to belong to a single user. Finally, with the software being web based you need a good internet connection. If you work in an area that doesn’t yet have fibre broadband you could be downloading the software for a long time.

Whilst Office 365 has some strong points you cannot help but feel that Microsoft has followed Abode with their Creative Suite subscription. The monthly revenues are clear benefits for these organisations but do they represent value for money for the end user. The jury is still out.