The Office 365 suite for business is priced at $4 per user per month and goes up to $22, depending on level of features and tools that are availed of by an enterprise. Office 365 for small business is available in retail for INR 9,119 for a 12-month subscription, while Office 365 Home Premium - targeted at families- is pegged at Rs 4,199 annually.
The launch is followed by one of the biggest marketing and promotional campaigns for any Microsoft product in India, says Ramkumar Pichai, head of Office division. “It will help us to increase our penetration of Office product in the Small and Medium Business segment,” said Pichai.
By running their back end on the cloud, the subscription-based model help businesses to reduce their capex spends on IT infrastructure, while increase productivity of employees by allowing them to work, share and collaborate across multiple platforms, he added. Social computing features come integrated in the latest version that has been optimised for use through touch, mouse and keypad.
”The next generation Office 365 unlocks social and mobility scenarios that will allow businesses and individuals to take full advantage of the cloud,” said Bhaskar Pramanik, chairman, Microsoft Corporation India.
The next generation Office 365 comes bundled with Office (Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook, OneNote, Access, InfoPath and Publisher), Project and Visio. It includes updated Microsoft Lync Online, Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and Yammer. Office 365 can be installed on up to five devices for a single user under the Office 365 licensing.
Since its launch in mid-2011, Microsoft claims that Office 365 is one it’s fastest growing businesses globally.