{"id":993,"date":"2011-07-12T21:06:35","date_gmt":"2011-07-12T21:06:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/refraction.co.uk\/blog\/?p=993"},"modified":"2011-07-12T21:30:03","modified_gmt":"2011-07-12T21:30:03","slug":"office-365-for-free","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/refraction.co.uk\/blog\/2011\/07\/12\/office-365-for-free\/","title":{"rendered":"Office 365 for free?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the past couple of weeks I\u2019ve been taking a good look at Office 365<\/a> and what it has to offer.\u00a0\u00a0 On the face of it MS\u2019s new toy is pretty compelling, it offered businesses a decent way of moving their basic communications apps \u2013 email and messaging \u2013 into the cloud whilst still retaining the familiar Office experience for users.\u00a0 For existing organisations that already have an MS platform it would seem like a decent path to follow.\u00a0 But what about new or very small businesses?<\/p>\n

One of the many good things about Google\u2019s Apps platforms has always been that most of it\u2019s capability is available for free.\u00a0 It\u2019s buried within<\/a> the apps pages of the Google site, but if you don\u2019t need more than 10 accounts you can sign up for apps for no cost.\u00a0 There are some limitations but you do get Gmail, Calendar, Docs and Sites.\u00a0 You can also set it up to work with your own domain (so no @gmail email addresses) and use those accounts with all the other Google services like Reader or Picasa.<\/p>\n

The 10 user account limit used to be 50, so it was a pretty viable solution for small businesses or organisations.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure this must have worked out ok for Google as some of those organisations expanded and moved to the full Google Business Suite.\u00a0 I do wonder why MS hasn\u2019t offered a similar deal.<\/p>\n

With BPOS and Office 365 arriving quite late to the online office party it does have some ground to make up.\u00a0 Google has a proven offering, which is almost the default option if you\u2019re starting a small business.\u00a0 MS does offer a basic 365 product \u2013 it\u2019s Plan P<\/a> \u2013 which offers 25 users or less an Exchange mailbox<\/a> and calendar, Office Web Apps<\/a>, Lync messaging\/conferencing<\/a> and SharePoint Online<\/a> for \u00a34\/$6 a month.\u00a0 The basic Google Apps and Plan P are pretty much feature comparable for a small business, but why would you choose to pay $6 a month if you didn\u2019t have to?\u00a0 (That said\u2026 $6 a month for 365 vs $50 a year for Apps is far closer\u2026 but that\u2019s another discussion).<\/p>\n

If I were MS I\u2019d be tempted to give Plan P away, at least for the same 10 users or less that Google Apps does.\u00a0 By all means charge \u00a34 a month for 10-50 users but have a free option to gain some market penetration amongst very small businesses and the more technically savvy home users.<\/p>\n

Of course the economics of this might not add up, I\u2019ve not idea how much this low end of the platforms offerings contribute to revenues\u2026 but I suspect it\u2019s a very small part as Google kinda has that small market wrapped up at the moment.\u00a0 The only way to change that is \u2018free\u2019\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With Microsoft Office 365 offering a good platform, but needing to gain market traction, why not offer a free option to match Google Apps?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[45,242,13,474,483],"class_list":["post-993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech","tag-cloud","tag-google-apps","tag-microsoft","tag-office-365","tag-small-business","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/refraction.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/refraction.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/refraction.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/refraction.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/refraction.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=993"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/refraction.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/993\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":995,"href":"https:\/\/refraction.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/993\/revisions\/995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/refraction.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/refraction.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/refraction.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}