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

 

Understanding: Interfaces

When creating applications, there sometimes comes the need to use interfaces. An 'interface' is one of the types available in the VB .Net language (and for that matter almost all other OO languages). Interfaces are perhaps one of the most difficult types to explain. Most writeups or articles explain it as a contract; a contract that binds two classes together.

I, on the other hand, prefer to say: Interfaces can be best explained as a 'language'; like English or Arabic. Sometimes classes need to communicate between each other, if written by the same person, that would not be much of a problem. But sometimes these classes are written by a number of different people, probably people from another firm, country and/or continent.

In order to communicate with each other, like us humans (at least those of us who call themselves that :-)) classes need a common language they all speak. This language must be understood by all and follow the same rules and regulations everywhere.

In programming this is called an interface. It is a way of ensuring all related classes speak the same language. For example, if class A wants class B to do a certain task, the only way for class A to insure that class B can do the task, is by checking if class B implements the ICanDoTask (for example) interface.

Unlike inheritance, a class can implement an unlimited number of interfaces.

Perhaps you can understand more if you read this: http://www.vbip.com/books/1861004915/chapter_4915_10.asp.

Enjoy!