MARLIN LUCAS

MARLIN LUCAS

Carlos strickland

,

United States

“Quincy Rice”

Microsoft to beef up its entry-level Office 365 offering

microsoft project 2010
Microsoft is adding some new capabilities — which include Exchange ActiveSync support — to help its lowest-end Office 365 offering.

In a post to his “The microsoft project 2010 Exhibit Board” blog, project professional 2010 Senior Partner Technological know-how Advisor Jesper Osgaard described some of the tweaks the Softies are making to your Office 365 K-plan (kiosk member of staff plan):

Exchange Online Kiosk Plan: project professional 2007 is adding Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) support for mobile devices to the current Exchange Online Kiosk approach. Currently, users with that plan only have POP mail capabilities. “With this change, we will permit all smartphones that support EAS, including iPhone, Andriod mobile phones, Nokia phones (Symbian), and Windows phones, ” Osgaard blogged.

E-mail storage space: Microsoft is doubling e-mail storage space for K plan users from 500 MB to 1 GB.

Exchange Online Archiving: Microsoft is going to be enabling “Exchange Online Archiving (EOA) which include legal hold and indefinite storage, to be offered for an add-on to any Change Online plan, including Kiosk together with Exchange Plan 1, ” your dog said.

I asked Osgaard when these changes may be effective and he said that date holds TBD (to be determined). Microsoft is rolling out updates across Office 365 for a quarterly basis, with the latest set of updates hitting right at the end of 2011. Microsoft is believed to have sold for longer than 5 million Office 365 seat designs, 90 percent of which have gone to small establishments.

Office 365 is that Microsoft-hosted bundle of Change Online, SharePoint Online together with Lync Online that Ms launched in late June 2010. It is regarded as being Microsoft’s alternative to Yahoo Apps. The Kiosk arrange for Office 365 currently starts at $2 per user each and every month. I have a question in the Office 365 team in the timing and whether there will be any pricing changes on account of these new features.

Update: Microsoft officials are not commenting on when the new features will be fired up. However, one Office 365 MVP, Loryan Strant, said that it will happen globally “around April 2012. ” Microsoft officials did say that new features will get in on both Exchange Online K and Office 365 Nited kingdom, with prices remaining with $2 per user every month, and $4 per user per month, respectively.