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By: Clint Patterson
Just one month ago, we introduced Office 365 to the world, and the response has been awesome. We continue to see great press and analyst coverage, fantastic partner support, and amazing customer interest. 5,000 people 'like' Office 365 on Facebook, more than 4,000 follow Office 365 on Twitter, thousands more read this blog every day, and more than 60,000 organizations have signed up for the beta - roughly 2,000 per day.
With all the buzz, we've seen lots of questions about the beta process and when will 'my' account be activated. So we wanted to take the chance to answer some of the top questions help folks understand what to expect.
1) When does the beta start?
It has already started. We are adding more organizations to the beta gradually over several weeks, so we're always adding new testers every day.
2) Why is the beta limited?
There are lots of reasons, but two are really important: First, we want everyone testing Office 365 to have a great experience, and second, we need to be able to test things like scalability and performance in a controlled environment. Limiting the beta ensures we can do both.
3) Will there be a "public" beta?
We expect to be able to add more folks to the beta, but we don't know when or how many just yet because we just started testing.
A public beta is something we always do for software products, but it's not always necessary for cloud services. With software, a public beta helps us test the near-infinite number of environments customers have, but with a cloud service, we have only one environment - our data centers. So, with cloud services, we will often gate beta access, as we did with betas for BPOS, Azure and Intune.
4) How many people get into the beta?
We're limiting the beta to just a few thousand organizations initially. Each organization will be able to roll out 25 accounts.
5) If I'm registered for the beta, how do I know if I got in?
You'll get an e-mail from us with your account credentials.
6) How are you determining who gets into the beta?
To start, you have to meet the requirements for the beta, like being in one of the thirteen countries and regions where it's available. Basic stuff like that. After that, it is basically first-come, first served, but there are a couple of exceptions. First, some early beta slots were allocated to existing customers who have been helping us design our cloud services. We figure that's the least we could do. Second, we require a geographically diverse set of testers. So, for example, if all the first applicants were in Hong Kong, we would eventually have to skip until we found the first applicants in Spain, Singapore and Germany.
7) Is the beta feature complete?
Not entirely. While it is mostly feature complete, we are still adding new capabilities, as is the case with most betas. Before we launch Office 365, we will add some additional capabilities, such as Lync Online capabilities from the newly released server, for example.
8) What happens if I have not gotten into the beta yet?
You'll get a monthly e-mail from us with the latest status on the service until you get in or we launch. We won't forget about you, and you'll be among the very first to learn when the service launches.
9) What should I do in the meantime? I really want to try out your service!
You can test BPOS with a free, 30-day trial right now (trust us, no wait list). BPOS combines Exchange Online and SharePoint Online with Office Live Meeting and Office Communications Online (soon to be Lync Online). You'll be in pretty elite company - Volvo, DuPont, Godiva, GAP, GlaxoSmithKline, Energizer, Starbucks, Tyco, Rexel and thousands of others have chosen BPOS for their business today. And if you subscribe to BPOS, you can move to Office 365 when it launches next year. (For more details on that transition, check out our BPOS transition center.)
10) So, if I haven't signed up for the beta already, should I even bother?
Yes. Bother! Signing up for the beta holds your place in line, so the fastest way to get into the beta is to sign up now.
Thanks for your enthusiasm and great questions. Keep them coming!
Clint
Comments: (98) Collapse
It’s good that you have the community. However, as a partner I would have thought that priority will be given to partners for the beta program especially current partners using the BPOS. I believe we have a lot of feedback to contribute based on our experience so far with the current BPOS version.
Partners in the end is a very important component to the success of BPOS and Office 365. I personally would like Microsoft to do something about this and make accessibility a priority for partners.
I second Abby's comment. As a partner it is crucial for us to get access to the services so that we can discover the feature set ahead of the curve so as to be able to clearly articulate the benefits to potential future clients.
become Google Apps partners instead....
When on the Beta, how do you submit questions or bugs (if any)?
Danny- If you're on the beta, than from this page (community.office365.com) you should be able to go to the "Forums" tab at the very top and see a forum titled "File bugs and suggestions" where we'll have all sorts of people ready to give you answers or pass your bugs onto the developers
Yes, Bart. When it comes to cloud services many customers still have hang ups and the customers that I believe will want to use this services have on many occasions are quite picky especially as it’s a subscriptions service and relatively new technologies. We as partners can help a lot by sharing our experiences through testing this products and provide valuable feedback that could help improve the product and make it easier to sell. Microsoft should really begin to give small partners priority in collecting feedback not just those that has helped in developing the product as suggested above.
As an example of this is the current BPOS Partner Administration Centre a useful tool that allows a partner to administer multiple client accounts but only available to an exclusive group of partners with no information and how other partners can get access to it. In a situation I experienced the other day this could have been useful. I was trying to help a client of main manage a SharePoint website but found that in other for me to login to their Shear point website I had to Sign-out of my MOS sign-in client on my PC before I can login to my clients SharePoint site. So, centralised admin centre for partners to provision and manage their MOS clients will be a massive plus.
Partners like me would like to contribute more but since it so difficult to get on the BETA we know nothing of what’s coming which might also help us and Microsoft make more noise to our customers ahead of RTM
Is the beta available in the Netherlands? I informed my clients (mostly healthcare) about the Office 365 opportunities based on the information found on office365.com and other sources and they are very interested.
I have to agree with the partners in that they (like the rest of us) are left basically in the dark. Sure there is this blog and when one thumbs through the whole thing there is some info that can be picked up. There is also the community, but it is nothing more than a collection of Facebook, twitter, and this blog. There are more than 5000 people who like you on facebook, but they have to in order to get more information about the product, and even then they will receive little actual information. You receive glowing praise here, there and everywhere from people who have no idea what it is like to actually use it. Anywhere that there is info about the service, it just goes over the same tired news about the 4 major components of the service. A lot of people (especially those currently using OLSB) are wanting a better description of users, e-mail addresses, secure log in (and whether it will be available to customers or just users), any sort of integrated store manager, domain management, whether document sharing will be available with customers or just users, whether there will be any alternatives for those who don't want to opt in as far as e-mail, or website transfer to another service provider as most of your competitors have means of doing this, and many other questions. In addition, it would be good to be able to at least view the blog and forum for current 365 users whether we can post there or not.
Also from me the question: When on the Beta, how do you submit questions or bugs (if any)? At the forums tab, there is no "File bugs and suggestions" and I see no possibility to post any comment, bug, information, etc.
Second question: how do I contact the Technical support? Our directory synchronization have more than 10,000 objects and we got the message "contact the Technical Support" but there are no information given, how to contact it.
Will 365 work with WP7 Office? I have WP7 and use MS OL SB, so can't use the WP7 apps
@Rob: Unfortunately, the Beta is not available in the Netherlands.
@MG: have you read this post? community.office365.com/.../welcome-to-the-office-365-community.aspx After you get your email and get signed up on community, it should take about 24hrs for you to receive full community access. And what Beta SKU do you have? For the Office 365 for enterprise help, you can go here: onlinehelp.microsoft.com/.../ff637572.aspx
For Office 365 for small business, go here: onlinehelp.microsoft.com/.../ff637528.aspx
Let me know if you still have questions.
Hi,
It is nice to see that the microsoft representatives here choose the comments they want to reply to. There are other valid comment already posted and I have not seen any responce to those.
It would be nice to see some of this comments taken on to lets us that your guys are listing to us.
@Abby: Sorry for not responding very quickly. Partners are incredibly important for Microsoft, our success in this space depends on their shared success. That being said, I remind you of Q4 above. The beta is open right now for only for a few thousand orgs, and we have more than 16,000 partners selling Microsoft Online Services!! It wouldn't be fair to limit the beta to just partners. We do recognize the value our partners bring and can contribute in terms of feedback. Again, as noted above, we plan to expand the beta in the future, and if partners have gotten on the list, they’ll get the beta at that time.
Thanks for commenting.
-Allen
@Wayne: Yes, Office 365 works great with WP7, specifically the SharePoint integration, ability to edit Office documents, and view PowerPoint Broadcasts as a part of Lync Online Meetings are some of the great features you'l get.
I agree with some of the comments here - it's funny how Microsoft has not given priority to its partners. One would think that when your truly a 'partner' that you would be given some additional resource/opportunity to use and test the product. As a new partner to the eco-system I would have liked to see better support!
Comments: (loading) Collapse