Lots of talk has been buzzing around the web about the impending release of Office 365, and today Microsoft finally took the covers off the next version of its desktop productivity suite – Office 2013.
The confusion here is that it’s partly being branded as Office 365 Home Premium (you can read more on the Microsoft Press Release). This particular offering does integrate with cloud services such as SkyDrive and Skype, and is itself delivered via the cloud on a subscription basis – however has no relation to what we have traditionally known as Office 365 being Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and Lync Online.
I refer to a previous post I wrote in which I shared my concerns over the name Office 365 as being generally confusing – now with the addition of Home Premium I personally believe this extends the confusion. Home users will now thing they have Office 365, which is nothing compared to what enterprises run their corporate productivity systems on.
When is the actual business cloud service of Office 365 being updated? Steve Ballmer’s post on The Official Microsoft Blog explains more.
Discover more from Loryan Strant, Microsoft 365 MVP
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Steve Ballmer’s blog says the business cloud service will be updated ‘beginning 27th February”. Its still not possible to get a confirmation from MS that this is for all users, and I think beginning means just that. Some will some wont. Not very helpful MS. The message I get leaves me very frustrated “we’re not in a position to provide you an exact date right now”.
When it is released on the 27th Feb they will start notifying customers.