Answers to your questions about Office 365

Office 365 will be available sometime next year for $6 per user per month, although customers can sign up for a beta version today. Microsoft executives at a launch event in San Francisco made a point of saying that offering Office 365 as a cloud service brings enterprise level technology to the smallest of businesses. A flower shop, a small design firm, or an organic restaurant can use Exchange for e-mail, SharePoint for collaboration and Lync (formely Microsoft Unified Communications Server) for combining video and audio conferencing, IM, text and other communications technology.

A: "Office Professional Plus can be purchased standalone or as an add-on to any Office 365 offering for $12 per user per month. It includes Word 2010, Excel 2010, PowerPoint 2010, Outlook with Business Contact Manager, OneNote 2010, Publisher 2010, Access 2010, InfoPath 2010 and Office Web Apps."

"We believe that the channel model is Microsoft's greatest advantage in addressing the large segments of the market that require full support and integration outside the Microsoft product line," he said, citing as examples BlackBerry smartphone and VOIP business grade phone service. He also emphasized that many managed service providers connecting customers to the cloud want to own the customer relationship directly without Microsoft cutting in.