Microsoft Office 365 Mobile for Android Released

Worldwide software giant Microsoft rolled out Mobile Office to Windows mobile devices long back, and now announced on Wednesday that Office Mobile for Android is now available for download.

The app allows Office 365 subscribers basic editing tools for Word, Excel and PowerPoint files as well as document synchronization.

Office Mobile App for Android smartphones joins identical offering by Microsoft for Apple's iPhone. Microsoft hasn't said when Office Mobile apps would be available on Android or Apple tablets, and recommends users use the Office Web Apps for those devices. Requirements for the Office Mobile for Android app include smartphones running the Android OS 4.0 or higher paired with an Office 365 subscription, priced at $100 per year for Home Premium and $150 for Small Business Premium.

Microsoft is still favoring its own Windows mobile OS over others, a move that has VARs like Falcon wondering if the Redmond, Wash.-based company's decision was intentional in order to push customers to its Surface tablet and Windows 8 convertible devices. If Microsoft is perpetuating its closed ecosystem mentality, Falcon said, "it runs the risk of further alienating mobile customers who have already taken a pass Microsoft and are now Google or Apple customers."

You can download the app from Google Play store. Click here to download and install.

Microsoft Office 365 Over Google Mail

Electronics manufacturer Note unified its communication infrastructure and reduced its IT costs by switching from Google Mail to Microsoft Office 365, which delivered greater value and offered a familiar work environment for its employees. In late 2010, Note adopted the Google service, but the IT team at Note soon determined that the collaboration features Google provided were not meeting business needs. By the end of 2011, Note had switched from Google to Office 365.

“Office 365 is much more integrated and advanced than Google and offers more of the functionality our employees need,” said Mikael Johansson, IT and process development manager at Note. “Our employees can use Office 365 without additional training. Combined with the extended functionality in Microsoft SharePoint Online and Microsoft Lync Online, we think Office 365 offers much more enterprise value than Google.”

Based near Stockholm, Note is one of the largest contract manufacturers of electronics equipment in Scandinavia, with nine factories and 1,000 employees in six countries. Since Note centralized its communications with Office 365, the company is now able to better manage information and provide its employees with new opportunities to collaborate easily and productively.

“Office 365 is a better fit with our overall IT strategy,” Johansson said. “Now we have a single environment we can use to help organize and share information between business teams and across multiple facilities and devices. Google offers no equivalent to the deep integration between Office 365, Microsoft Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and Lync Online.”

Instead of managing multiple solutions from Google and other providers, Note has reduced costs by consolidating its collaboration environment with Office 365. The company can manage its Office 365 subscriptions under a single agreement and avoid the cost of third-party solutions.“We are a manufacturing company,” Johansson said. “Whenever we can effectively outsource our IT burden like we can with Office 365, we build competitive advantages for our business.”

More information on Microsoft’s customer success stories is available at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/presskits/customerspotlight. More information on Office 365 is available at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/presskits/office.

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