Few pitfalls nevertheless

A few pitfalls nevertheless, the beta itself seems quite stable. I had no problems with any part of the beta using Internet Explorer 9, Firefox 4, or Chrome 10, and I used all of them extensively.

What, specifically, is an Office 365? The best way to explain Office 365 to your boss is that it includes Office 2010, if you want it. Nevertheless mostly, it includes cloud-based versions of the server glue that ties the Office pieces at the same time: Exchange for email, SharePoint for document collaboration and Team Sites, and Lync for live communications.

For smaller organizations, Office 365 means getting all of those glue-at the same time pieces without running your own servers or hiring network admins because Microsoft provides simplified forms for controlling the glue, as then as providing all of the server oomph your organization needs over the Internet.

There are lots of good things in the glue. To illustrate, Exchange lets you get at all of your email through the Outlook Web App, so you can move freely back and forth between Outlook on your PC or Mac and Outlook in a browser or on a phone or iPad. Actions you take on one device show up on the others. Exchange as well lets you share calendars and contacts. SharePoint supports central document storage and collaboration in Team Sites. It even has a click-and-drag, rudimentary Web page construction application. Lync covers instant messaging, VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) calling, and videoconferences, and it ties into Outlook and SharePoint Team Sites.

For larger organizations, Office 365 can, for the moment in theory, off-load some of the work currently performed by your network admins and make it considerably simpler to set up far-flung locations. Even a single location can mix Office 365 and non-Office 365 users. If your company is eyeing Exchange 2010, SharePoint 2010, and Lync 2010, Office 365 makes the deployment simpler. Microsoft guarantees backup, security, and uptime. There's a great deal of debate as to how much of the network admin function should be off-loaded to Microsoft. And the process of moving from in-house servers to Microsoft's servers in the sky promises to be a fertile, lucrative ground for specialized consultants for the at once decade or two.

The Office Web Apps -- stripped-down versions of Word

Office 365 as well includes the Office Web Apps -- stripped-down versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote -- however those are free to anybody on Windows Live SkyDrive. Microsoft emphasizes the role of Office WebApps in making Exchange email and SharePoint documents accessible on mobile devices, just as Windows Phone, clearly, yet also iPhone/iPad, Android, and BlackBerry devices. If the document is stored on your company's SharePoint site, editing it by phone isn't as impossible as it sounds.

Office 365 will work with Windows 7, Windows Vista SP2, Windows XP SP3, Mac OS X Leopard, and Mac OS X Snow Leopard, during the Office Web Apps will work with Safari, Firefox, and Chrome, and Internet Explorer. If you've already paid for Office 2007 or 2010, you don't need to rent Office 2010 as part of your Office 365 subscription.

An example: I have a Word document that I want to save on the SharePoint Team Site. In Word, I click File, Save and Send, Save to SharePoint, at that time I double-click on my Team Site. Word shows me a dialog that's very similar to a standard Save As dialog. I type in the name of the file, choose Save As Word Document, and click Save. Straightway I twiddle my thumbs for a minute or two, and all things considered SharePoint shows me a dialog that says, "The Web server requires you to pick the type of document previously it can be saved." I have to tell SharePoint that I'm saving "A blank Microsoft Word document." Sorry, that's just dumb, and it's indicative of the lack of communication that goes on between the Office apps and the server apps.

The Office 365 beta Earlier you jump into the beta

Working with the Office 365 beta Earlier you jump into the beta, you need to decide if you're going to try testing Office 365 as a Small Business or as an Enterprise. The primary difference between the two is in your level of familiarity with the server apps. If you've never dabbled with Exchange, SharePoint, or Lync, choose the Small Business option. If the server stuff's old-hat and you're for the most part wondering how you'll move from your own servers to Microsoft's, go with the Enterprise beta.

Setting up the beta is not difficult, though the sequence is a bit confusing. Here are the steps you should follow for the Small Business beta.

Next, install the Lync 2010 client. This part's a bit confusing because if you're running a 64-bit version of Windows, you have to select and install the 64-bit version of Lync. As before long as it's installed, you're given a chance to log in to Lync. Go ahead and do so, using your Office 365 beta user ID as the "Sign-in address."

The client side

On the client side, I had a lot of trouble getting new users connected to the SharePoint Team Site. Working in Word 2010, for instance, there isn't any easy way to navigate to the Team Site; when I click on File, Save and Send, Send to SharePoint, the Team Site doesn't at first appear. When I at that time double-click on Browse for a Location, I'm unceremoniously dumped into the Save As dialog box, without a clue where to go. Clicking on File/Open doesn't bring up the Team Site either, at least with the naked eye. Though my SharePoint Team Site appeared on the Windows 7 Network list -- AskWoody.SharePoint.com was there, along with all of my networked PCs -- I couldn't navigate in or around it.

Consultants who have set up their customers with Small Business Server should be looking hard at the benefits of setting up Office 365. Professionals and SME businesses that would find Exchange, SharePoint, and Lync useful now have a good alternative. And it's cheap.

This article, "InfoWorld preview: Office 365 beta," was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Follow the latest developments in cloud computing and Windows at InfoWorld.com. For the latest business research news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.