Another Ray of Light From the Cloud

If business in the cloud is the ultimate goal, Microsoft Office 365 is a new rung in the ladder that gets you there. 

The power of the Microsoft Office suite has expanded greatly over the past few iterations, moving beyond mere calendars, emails and contacts into instant messaging, video chats, shared workspaces, collaborative computing, site hosting tools and more. To harness all that power, nevertheless, requires additional servers -- and pricey IT skills that can daunt a struggling small business.

To make all that power easy to use and available to anyone, the Windows giant on Monday rolled out a public beta of the new online tools that can power its Office applications suite: hosted, Internet services that take all the complexity out of running Microsoft Exchange and SharePoint servers -- and giving small businesses access to tools that would if not require teams of IT professionals and thousands of dollars.

To be clear, this isn't just online versions of Word, Outlook to cut a long story short on. Services like Google Apps and Office Web Apps are already available and free on the Internet -- and if you haven't tried these tools, you're missing out. Collaborating on the wording of a document or poring over a spreadsheet with someone across the country is as much of a game changer for business as TiVo was for TV.

Office 365 simplifies all that, and expands what your company is capable of seamlessly and easily. By moving the servers that power those features of your business out of your closet and into the cloud, you can offer new, advanced features to your team -- all for just $6/month per user.

Sound familiar? It should. Microsoft rolled Exchange Server into the clouds in February of 2010, when it unveiled the  Microsoft BPOS. And Google's Apps for Business offers much the same functionality for just $5 per user.

Instant messaging has been common for then over a decade, clearly, and quickly became something businesses latched on to. Like you, I too often instant message teammates sitting directly beside me. Many people rely on Skype, AIM, a Tipic client or Windows Messenger for this functionality.

Lync has been quietly around for years, offering powerful enterprise level functionality; it's instant messaging on steroids. Shared online whiteboarding? Calling different devices and numbers via VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), and seamless handoffs? Yep, it's all  in there. Earlier, Lync required but another server. Now, it's online.

Online client for instance

Outlook 365 adds an online client for instance, so even without installing the app, you can start a chat. It works across mobile phones as so then, and offers a host of features for the most part only available to enterprise businesses - it's the kind of program you'll get more out of the more you explore -- all for that same low fee.

If you're a small business looking to get web-savvy in a hurry, Office 365 is a great way to get online in a jiff - and at the time get right back to business.

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