Microsoft to beef up its entry-level Office 365 providing

Microsoft is adding some new capabilities — which include Exchange ActiveSync support — to its lowest-end Office 365 offering.

In a post to his “The microsoft project 2010 Exhibit Board” blog, project professional 2010 Senior Partner Technology Advisor Jesper Osgaard described some of the tweaks the Softies are making to your Office 365 K-plan (kiosk worker plan):

Exchange Internet Kiosk Plan: project professional 2007 is adding Change ActiveSync (EAS) help for mobile devices to the present Exchange Online Kiosk strategy. Currently, users with that will plan only have TAKE mail capabilities. “With that change, we will enable all smartphones that help EAS, including iPhone, Andriod devices, Nokia phones (Symbian), together with Windows phones, ” Osgaard blogged.

E-mail storage space: Microsoft is doubling e-mail storage space for K plan customers from 500 MB to 1 GB.

Exchange Online Archiving: Microsoft are going to be enabling “Exchange Online Archiving (EOA) including legal hold and unlimited storage, to be offered for an add-on to any Change Online plan, including Kiosk and Exchange Plan 1, ” he or she said.

I asked Osgaard when these changes is effective and he said that date is still TBD (to be determined). Microsoft is rolling available updates across Office 365 on the quarterly basis, with the latest batch of updates hitting afre the wedding of 2011. Microsoft is believed to have sold in excess of 5 million Office 365 seats, 90 percent of which have gone to small organizations.

Office 365 is that Microsoft-hosted bundle of Change Online, SharePoint Online and Lync Online that Ms launched in late June 2010. It is regarded as being Microsoft’s alternative to Yahoo Apps. The Kiosk arrange for Office 365 currently starts at $2 per user every month. I have a question in to the Office 365 team to the timing and whether there will be any pricing changes as a result of these new features.

Update: Microsoft officials are not commenting on when the new features will be fired up. However, one Office 365 MVP, Loryan Strant, said that this will happen globally “around March 2012. ” Microsoft officials did say that the new features will be part of both Exchange Online Nited kingdom and Office 365 Nited kingdom, with prices remaining at $2 per user each and every month, and $4 per user per month, respectively.

Published January 9th, 2012

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