With hundreds of millions of users, Microsoft Office is practically synonymous with business productivity. As the world grows more complex and interconnected, the definition of business productivity has expanded. Whether it's a financial analyst mastering thousands (or millions) of rows of data in Excel, a distributed team sharing documents with a SharePoint Team Site, or a CEO presenting to shareholders using a video-enhanced PowerPoint deck, Office has always been about enabling people to do more...

Update: We are running another round of provisioning tests to the Office 365 system tomorrow, 5/24. Over the next three days (5/2-5/4), we will be proactively running several tests on the Office 365 provisioning system . By intentionally poking, prodding and stressing the system, we expect new accounts could experience slower set up times. NOTE: This will only affect customers going through the setup process for their very first time. We do not expect any noticeable impact on existing Office 365...

Control in enterprise IT is a balancing act. Automation and outsourcing save time and money, but if done wrong, can give up too much and make it harder to make technology work for your business. Office 365 is designed to provide the right balance , enabling you to get the value and streamlined management of the cloud while keeping control of the things that matter to your business. In essence, it allows you to offload the tedious, repetitive, time-consuming aspects of IT management such as server...

Tampa General Hospital is making a big step forward in the advancement of healthcare: We're moving to the cloud! This may not be a medical breakthrough, but it's significant, because communication and collaboration is as the heart of everything we do. Our doctors, nurses, medical and administrative staff rely on technology to do great work every day, and we're bringing the tools we use up a notch. In the process, we'll improve our overall productivity, and in doing so, lower our overall IT costs...

Today, Microsoft officially launches Microsoft Lync , the next generation of Microsoft's unified communications software that enables people to connect in new ways, anytime, anywhere! I'm excited that with this launch, we provide a glimpse into what will be an integral part of the overall Office 365 experience. With Lync Online, Office 365 customers will be able to make every engagement face-to-face whether from across the hall or across the globe. To learn more about Lync, head on over to http:...

The Office for Mac blog just announced some very exciting news, Lync for Mac 2011 Released to Manufacturing! See the original post by Kirk Gregersen here . When we first announced Lync Server 2010 last November, we talked about our commitment to supporting multiple platforms and how over the course of 2011 you would see Lync become available for other platforms. I’m excited to share with you today that Lync for Mac 2011 has been Released to Manufacturing, commonly referred to as RTM. Starting...

Office 365 is proud to announce trial availability for customers in 22 additional markets (full list below), including Turkey, South Africa, Taiwan and Argentina. We also recently launched full commerce capabilities in Brazil, Russia and South Korea. So whether you are a customer doing business from the Arctic Circle or Cape of Good Hope to Cape Horn, you now have the ability to use Office 365 to power your business from the cloud. Customers in these markets are in good company as just five months...

By embracing Microsoft Office, customers get a powerful set of tools that support the entire spectrum of productivity use cases, from the most basic to the advanced. By contrast, Google Docs has deficiencies. These gaps are just not advanced features used by a few people, but basic features. Learn more about what happens when you choose a productivity suite that has deficiencies.

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Join us at our Virtual Launch Event on Wednesday, Feb. 27, as we celebrate the availability of a major new release coming to Office 365 for businesses. If you are exploring cloud offerings, you do not want to miss this event with executives, demos, real world stories from our customers about their move to the cloud, and a live chat with Q&A. Register now!

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We’ve been talking a lot about why Office 365 provides the best cloud productivity experience for customers of all sizes across the PC, phone and browser (see also previous post Office 365 across the Mac, Safari and iPhone ). Office 365 was designed with today’s fast-moving mobile worker in mind, and being productive today means being able to work on the go when you are without your PC. Email, Contacts and Calendaring with Exchange Online in Office 365 For those on the go, anytime access...