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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
At least from now on you should give partners in the beta list priority over others.
Thanks!
Hello,
we decided to use BPOS and we have a few Issues and hope that willl be better in Office 365.
Her is our Top Issue:
A. We want a share Mailbox/Shared Folder where different users can add as second account in Outlook
It doesn't work well because we can't set permissions and do a "send on behalf"
On every Start of Outlook you've been asked for credentials of the second mailbox.
Greets Helmut
I agree with Abby and Bart. Being one who has been creating solutions using MS platfroms since DOS 1.0 I certainly think partners should get priority. There has always been many opportunities to move over to working with Sun, Apple or others. In this tough economy you should, as Dan Marino would say, "take care of the hands that take care of you!"
Microsoft Bleu up this one big time, It demonstrated a total disregard for its partners. We busted our behinds in 2010 selling record numbers of BPOS seats and help make it as popular as it is, only to see Microsoft snub us. Clients are asking about the new services and we do not even have enough materials to work with,
To make things worse, we get those emails from Microsoft inviting us to know more about 365 by Facebook? twitter? Linkeden? Really ???
we really appreciate it... Microsoft
Hey harika bir proğram. Ama bizlere bunu sınırsız yapmanız gerektiği kanaatindeyim. Nede olsa bu işin kahrını biz çekiyoruz değilmi.....good year.
Hi,
I've got 250 free BPOS seats from the CloudPartnerProgram for a year. Will they automatically be upgraded to the 365 Beta once I'm added to the 365 beta program? I've signed up for the beta one or two months ago.
Denis posted 2011-Jan-14 3:47 AM |
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Delete @George Breahna: At least online services provided at a lower-than-SPLA-license-cost price make life significantly more difficult for us. If you offer SPLA services over terminal servers, it probably would not be just the office suite but include some individual LoB application or customization as well - this will not be possible with a mainstream product like Office 365. But I see tough arguments coming with company owners having read "Office for 6$" taglines and asking "What? 40$ per SEAT?!".
We all thanks microsoft for this great job , and I expect more from you . But we like to have a public beta .
from what I can see of office 365, it is that we the user's of these system's will not need "partners" any more. We will be empowered to implement change, quicker and without the cost that has been associated with working partners in the past to the benefit of our business, never again will a good idea rest upon the will or want of someone who does not work or understand the business
@matthew Do you really believe that Microsoft has the will & ability to custom tailor their solution for each individual client, big or small ? That's what the role of the partner has been. To provide the knowledge and skills to implement custom solutions.
<@Ed - Our forums are accessible through this site but only to beta members.>
I'm a 365 beta member but have no idea where these forums are. There are no links in this site and they don't even come up in a search.
@Luke: These countries/regions include: Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong SAR, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Singapore, Spain, United Kingdom, and the United States.
@Tue: Thanks for the comment, sorry we are not in Vietnam at this time. First, we are just getting started with Office 365, building geographically dispered datacenters all over the world. The distance and location of these from an end user makes a difference in the quality of the service, and we also need to make sure we have phone support, training materials and a community built to support the product in your language. All this takes time. That being said, we are working to expand our list of countries as quickly as possible.
@Helmut: Thanks for your suggestion. In Office 365, we have two things that I think can help. 1) Support for shared mailboxes, which allows multiple people to connect to a mailbox (like help@contoso.com) and send messages with the identity of that mailbox
2) Support for delegate access to mailboxes and calendars, which is essential for executive assistants and others who manage shared resources.
@Patriek: Yes, all BPOS seats will be upgraded to Office 365 in the months after General Avalability.
@Webbrewer: This is the site, when you are logged in (with your Office 365 beta account name) you will be able to click on the "Blogs", "Forumns" and "Wikis" links on the top of the page. Secondly, when you are in the product, selecting "Help" or clicking on any of the suggested topics in the right sidebar will take you there.
@Allen_MSFT: Any idea if Australia will be included in the initial launch, or will we have to wait some time after the initial launch?
@George/Denis
Thank you for your comments and discussion. We really value our partners and are commited to helping you build a business around Office 365. As George mentioned, we need our partners to provide custom tailored solutions on top of ours top fit individual clients, big and small.
@Adrian/Greg/Joseph/Espo: I'd love to hear from you where we have gaps in the material we've provided to our customers. If you haven't been there yet, take a look at Quickstartonlineservices.com. This should provide you a good base to have a conversation about Office 365. If you are a US partner, you can also check out www.mspartnerdirect.com/office365sp. Further, if there is something else that you'd really like, I'd encourage you to provide us feedback at Office365@microsoft.com. Nobody is more vested in our partners' success than us, because your success is ours.
@Adrian/Greg/Hawkun: I would also note that right now we are in a limited beta for a few thousand orgs, and we have more than 16,000 partners – so it didn’t seem fair to limit the beta to just partners and to pick some partners ahead of others. We do plan to scale and provide more access to the beta, so please bear with us as we get to the proper engineering milestones and can offer more access.
@greg: p.s. thanks for the laugh, I'll be your first inhabitant :)
@Luke: Well I know Office 365 will be available in over 40 countries at launch, but for the life of me I cannot find the list right now. I also know any of the markets who have BPOS will get Office 365, so putting two and two together I am almost positive it will. Let me do some checking and I'll get back to you.
Comments: (loading) Collapse