Office 365 and SharePoint 2010 SP1 are Now Available
Big news in the SharePoint world this week with the release of Office 365 (including SharePoint Online) and the ServicePack1 release for SharePoint 2010. I missed all the action earlier this week as I was out sick but I thought I’d summarize it as a simple reference list for me and I hope this is of use to you as well.
Office 365 is now publicly available in 20 languages and 40 markets around the world at https://www.office365.com. If you’re wondering what Office365 is, it includes SharePoint Online, Exchange Online, Lync Online and Office 2010 Professional Plus that you can subscribe to as a “service” hosted and operated by Microsoft.
Watch the Office 365 Launch Video
If you want to get a good overview of Office365’s capabilities, you *MUST* watch this video. Steve Ballmer officially launched Office365 on July 28th and did a 30-minute presentation for the press. The recording of his presentation along with demos can be found here: https://www.microsoft.com/presspass/presskits/office/online/VideoGallery.aspx.
Tip: The built-in Silverlight player gave me some errors while trying to watch the recording. I then opened Windows Media Player and did a File->Open URL and pasted this link: https://cdn-smooth.ms-studiosmedia.com/news/mp4_hq/1006657_MS_OfficeDivision_Ballmer_06282011_HQ.mp4. The video then played flawlessly!
Free Training Kit for Developers
My colleague Chris Mayo has just released the Office 365 Developer Training Course and it is available for free here: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/Office365TrainingCourse. You can also checkout the SharePoint Online developer page (https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/gg153540.aspx) for more articles and downloads such as whitepapers, SDKs, etc.
Of course if you develop for SharePoint 2010, most of those skills apply for SharePoint Online as well since it is built on the same platform.
Independent Reviews of Office365
Read what others are saying about Office 365 in this collection of selected top news stories -https://www.microsoft.com/presspass/presskits/office/online/topStories.aspx
Two articles that I particularly enjoyed reading were:
- NPR on Five Reasons Microsoft Office 365 Should Be Taken Seriously - https://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2011/06/28/137474281/five-reasons-office-365-should-be-taken-seriously
- Office 365 vs. Google Docs Showdown: Feature by Feature -https://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/231294/office_365_vs_google_docs_showdown_feature_by_feature.html