Microsoft Office 365 trials in SA

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Microsoft announced the public trial of Microsoft Office 365 in South Africa last night (29 November 2011).

Microsoft Office 365 is a cloud-based productivity service for businesses.

The trial will allow South African businesses and users to try Office 365 for free for up to six months, until the service is officially launched here in the first half of 2012.

According to Microsoft, no existing infrastructure is necessary to use Office 365. The service is hosted in Microsoft’s data centres, and Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel, OneNote, Outlook, and other Office applications will connect to Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint and Lync.

Melanie Botha, Microsoft South Africa’s marketing and operations director, said that she expects early adopters of the service in South Africa to be small and medium enterprises (SME).

Office 365 will give SMEs access to the same business productivity solutions used by major enterprises, Botha said.

Tags: Active, cloud productivity, Microsoft, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Office 365, productivity