Microsoft to launch Office 365 on June 28

[Airbot]

Microsoft is holding its official launch of its cloud-hosted application suite, known as Office 365, on June 28.
CEO Steve Ballmer will be on hand at the New York launch event, according to an invitation I received.

June 28 also may be the date when the Office 365 service becomes generally available. (I’ve asked Microsoft for confirmation on this.) I’ve heard recently that Microsoft is planning to sign off on the final version of the service in early June — possibly even next week — and to make it generally available in late June.

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[jimbo45]

Hi there

General "Public" release or will there be Technet / MSDN releases first.

Also will MS Host these as an option or will the hosting have to be done via your own corporate / SOHO Intranet server or via 3rd parties.

I hope it's a lot better than "Windows Live" which presumably was a sort of "Trial" for a cloud type app.

So long as it is totally compatable with locally installed Office it could be a real winner for small businesses -- here again the COST per license etc will be a factor.

Awaiting with real interest on this product -- I'm a bit sceptical about "The Cloud" for doing everything but this type of app looks fine for "Office type" collaboration.

A need is also to be able to run the application but store documents locally -- for example I've worked in Large Oil companies -- I don't think they would like for example confidential Geological survey reports being stored on "Open Cloud Servers" although there would be no problem in running the SOFTWARE to create and process documents from the Cloud so long as these werent stored on a "Public" or 3rd party the Cloud server.


Anyway keeping a watch on this one.

Cheers
jimbo