microsoft office 365

Sanket Akerkar (left), Managing Director, Microsoft Corporation India, and Sanjay Manchanda, Director, Microsoft Business Division, at a press conference in New Delhi on Wednesday.

This is part of the company's comprehensive cloud services strategy

Microsoft on Wednesday launched Office 365 specially developed for enterprises and business houses. Being offered at prices starting at $2 per month per user, Office 365 will allow enterprise and business customers to access Microsoft's popular e-mail, collaboration, conferencing and productivity capabilities online.

Pointing out that the new product would help reduce IT-related costs of companies by up to 50 per cent, Microsoft Corporation India Managing Director Sanket Akerkar said: “This launch is part of Microsoft's comprehensive cloud services strategy. Almost all of Microsoft's on premise enterprise solutions are already on the cloud, and the launch of Office 365 takes it to the next level. Today Microsoft's customers can choose to deploy either cloud-based or on-premise solutions, or both, depending on their need, and in turn experience the flexibility and cost control needed to drive higher business productivity”.

“Microsoft Office 365 provides all of the familiar enterprise class productivity solutions on a flexible usage and payment model, delivering streamlined communication with high availability, comprehensive security and simplified IT management. Customers who have already started using the services are realising savings from reduced hardware, software and operational costs. In a nutshell, it allows them to do more with less,” he added.

Already over 12,000 Indian businesses have joined hands with Microsoft for a 45-day trial period, while globally over two-lakh customers have signed up. For the first time ever, customers can also avail themselves of Microsoft Office, the world's most popular productivity offering, on subscription basis off the cloud. In the coming months, Microsoft Office 365 will also provide significant opportunities to a huge ecosystem of partners that will sell, customise and provide consulting, migration and managed services for Microsoft Online Services to Indian small and medium businesses.

The official site is

office365.com