Recently Office 365 beta became available for a select group of users. You can watch a
sneak peek here if you don’t have access yourself: http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Office-365-The-power-to-think-big-and-be-small-to-be-big-and-act-fast
In this sneak peek you see:
– Outlook online, with conversations view (same like Outlook 2010)
– Teamsites, same as SharePoint 2010
– Public facing website. This was not possible with BPOS (the old Office 365)
– Lync, new version of OCS
– Access services, possible to view and edit as well in the browser as locally
– OneNote, works nicely with Windows Phone 7: open Note file on your mobile, take photo and embed it in the file. For other users it is instantly available when they refresh this file in their browser or on their mobile.
When you used BPOS you had to use an (annoying) client tool to achieve Single Sign on (SSO). For Office 365 you only need a client tool to do some onetime only settings.
What is really cool is the use of federation services. With Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) you can connect the users of your organization to Office 365. A user comes into the office (or logs in from anywhere else #newworldofwork), logs on to the computer with Windows Authentication and is automatically signed in on Office 365. Go away annoying pop up, you!
Rik Dekker 