Office 365 gets its First Upgrade

Microsoft has announced the first major upgrade for Office 365 to help users gain more leverage from the whole package that consists of Microsoft Office, SharePoint Online, Exchange Online and Lync Online. In order to help customers and employees work together in the cloud, Office 365 is being preferred more than other services in the same genre by several organizations.

In lieu of its wide usage and coverage, more than 30 new features have been incorporated into this upgrade of Office 365 for professionals, small businesses and enterprises. The most talked about features are:

• Office 365 support is now enabled for OS X Lion.
• Support for Windows Phone 7.5 Mango release is provided.
• Several improvements in the client access control area have been added.
• Windows Live ID can be used to connect to SharePoint Online for external users.
• SharePoint Online is now supported on Chrome and Internet Explorer 9.
• Administrators can reset their own passwords through a text message (SMS) or an additional email address. See video
• SharePoint Online now has Business Connectivity Services (BCS) as well.
• A Do It Yourself (DIY) troubleshooting tool is now available to help customers solve any problems or issues themselves.
• MAC users can now use Lync in order to share instant messages and to perform video conferencing.

One of the most noticeable update is the release of Office 365 to 22 new countries including Argentina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Egypt, Estonia, Iceland, Indonesia, Kuwait, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Malta, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Taiwan, Turkey, Ukraine and UAE. With this, Microsoft Office 365 has been taken to the next level of customers thereby increasing its accessibility and popularity.

Based on several feedbacks that it obtained from clients, Microsoft has also released an update for SkyDrive, Online-hosting service. As per Windowsteamblog, previously the way users shared data was primarily ruled by the way they organized data. With this update, however, an app-centric approach has been adapted. From now on, users can share from whatever application they are currently working in, without having to worry about structure of folders or sub folders. Thus, with this update, sharing of data or collaborating with friends and colleagues across the organization is easy, simple and definitely faster.

With these two major updates, Microsoft has once again strived hard to please its users and make its applications friendlier. It certainly seems to be good news for all those Office 365 and SkyDrive users out there!

Cygnet offers professional services using Office 365 and Windows Azure to assist clients in developing cloud based applications.