How can you buy Office 365?

Now that we know what Office 365 is, it is important to find out how we can buy the service from Microsoft. While we're at it, we can find out how much does Office 365 cost to subscribe to.

Simply put, here are the current Office 365 offerings, all of which can be found on the Office 365 website here:

• Office 365 Home Premium (US$ 99.99 per user per year)
  Designed for home use, and includes:
• Microsoft Office 2013 to be installed on up to 5 PCs or Macs (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Publisher, and Access)
• Office On-Demand and Office WebApps
• +20 GB online storage with SkyDrive
• 60 Skype world minutes per month (available in select countries)
• Office 365 Small Business Premium (US$ 150 per user per year)
  Designed for small companies with up to 10 users, and includes:
• Exchange Online with 25GB mailbox
• SharePoint Online with a public website and internal team sites
• Lync Online with web conferencing and instant messaging
• Microsoft Office 2013 to be installed on up to 5 PCs or Macs (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Publisher, Lync, and Access)
• Office On-Demand and Office WebApps
• Simple IT Controls
• Office 365 Midsize (US$ 180 per user per year)
  Designed for midsize businesses with between 11 and 250 users, and includes:
• Exchange Online with 25GB mailbox
• SharePoint Online with a public website and internal team sites
• Lync Online with web conferencing and instant messaging
• Microsoft Office 2013 to be installed on up to 5 PCs or Macs (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Publisher, Lync, InfoPath, and Access)
• Office On-Demand and Office WebApps
• Enhanced IT Controls
• Office 365 E1 Plan (US$ 8 per user per month)
  Designed for enterprises with over 250 users, and includes:
• Exchange Online with 25GB mailbox
• SharePoint Online with a public website and internal team sites
• Lync Online with web conferencing and instant messaging
• Office On-Demand and Office WebApps
• File storage and sharing with SkyDrive Pro
• Advanced IT Controls
• Office 365 E3 Plan (US$ 20 per user per month)
  Designed for enterprises with over 250 users, and includes:
• Exchange Online with 25GB mailbox
• SharePoint Online with a public website and internal team sites
• Lync Online with web conferencing and instant messaging
• Microsoft Office 2013 to be installed on up to 5 PCs or Macs (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Publisher, Lync, InfoPath, and Access)
• Office On-Demand and Office WebApps
• File storage and sharing with SkyDrive Pro
• Advanced IT Controls

Of course, you can buy individual products:

• Exchange Online: US$ 4 (or US$ 8 for added features) per user per month
• SharePoint Online: US$ 3 (or US$ 7 for added features) per user per month
• Lync Online: US$ 2 (or US$ 5.50 for added features) per user per month
• Project Online: US$ 33 per user per month (paid annually in advance)

Alternatively, you can contact your favorite IT service provider and ask them to get you Office 365.

In conclusion, it is important to say that Office 365 is not a 'one-size-fits-all' type of product. Companies should decide based on their requirements with consideration for future expansion.

What is Office 365?

With all the hype surrounding Office 365, I've noticed that most people still don't know what it is. First impressions, probably because of the name, tend to go towards it being the next version of Office, the popular desktop suite. This is partially true, as Office is part of Office 365, but not the entire story.

Office 365 comprises of 4 main products, 3 or which are Cloud-based, as follows:

• Exchange Online: this is Microsoft's enterprise level email, calendar and contacts platform, hosted and managed by Microsoft. Under Exchange Online, users get email (25GB mailbox per user) as well as calendar and contact management, including the most current antivirus and anti-span solutions to help protect your organization.
• SharePoint Online: this is Microsoft's collaboration suite, hosted and managed by Microsoft. Under SharePoint Online, businesses can create sites to share documents and insights with colleagues, partners and customers.
• Lync Online: this is Microsoft's unified communications offering, hosted and managed by Microsoft. Under Lync Online, users can meet online with PC-audio, video (including HD) conferencing and screen sharing capabilities. Lync Online can also be used for instant messaging and presence (available, busy, do not disturb, etc.) sharing.
• Office Professional Plus: this is Microsoft's popular productivity suite which can be downloaded (only downloads no other media available) and installed on up to 5 devices, Windows and/or Macs, per user.

It is important to note that, Office Professional Plus includes other features such as on-demand download; this basically means you can download Office applications (not the entire thing) on any number of Windows & Mac devices work on your documents and then when you're done, Office will remove itself automatically. You can even work on Office documents directly from the browser.

There are other products available from Microsoft as part of the Office 365 suite, however, the main four pillars are those mentioned above. Other products include:

• Project Online, and soon (unofficially speaking),
• Visio Online

Here is glance at what each of the core Office 365 products entails:

Links:

• Exchange Online: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/microsoft-exchange-online-email-for-business-FX103739072.aspx
• SharePoint Online: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/online-collaboration-software-sharepoint-online-FX103789366.aspx
• Lync Online: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/lync/webinar-software-lync-online-features-FX103789571.aspx
• Project Online: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/project/online-project-management-software-project-online-FX103802026.aspx

 

A lesson in Project Management

I've had my fair share of failed projects. Not as little as I'd wanted, but nonetheless, fair. One day, I realized I've had one too many and have since then embarked upon a number of project management courses.

My main area of trouble was properly estimating the timeframe for a project, and then sticking to that timeframe. Seems easy enough, only it ain't. You see, there is a very large number of unforeseen variables, that kinda pop up on you.

First of all, allow me to introduce 2 facts. One: a project is a set of tasks. Two: a successful project is one that is completed on time, within budget and meets the defined specifications / features it was set out to complete. Anything other than that is deemed a failed project.

According to that latter piece of information, almost 75% of all software projects are failures. In fact, according to that fact, all my projects are failures.

Now, when planning for a project, the simplest and perhaps the most important piece of information you should know is that there are 3 pivots to every project; features, timeframe and resources.

• Features: what is the project set out to complete. In other words 'the scope of the project.'
• Timeframe: the period of time within which the project should be completed.
• Resources: the budget within which the project is to be completed and / or the number of people involved.

When communicating with project sponsor (the owner of the project and most importantly who will pay for it) you should say "You have 3 important factors; features, timeframe and resources; pick any two?" What this means, is that if 2 factors are set, the third factor is affected either upwards or downwards.

To explain this better, here's an example. A project has 20 tasks, and must be completed within 3 days. This means that the number of people to work on this project should be increased to 5. The same project, but to be completed in 10 days would require only 2 people.

Another project with 50 tasks, where ONLY 4 people (maybe because of money shortage) can work on, would require 30 days to be completed. Get the drift?

Another issue to take care of is: scope creep. Scope creep is when the number of features / tasks in the project seems to increase as time goes by. This would result in a never ending project, and a sure failure.

One parting piece of information: if you fail to plan, you plan to fail.

Enjoy!