Office 365 Seeks Position in the Enterprise

Microsoft appears to be hoping that its network of resellers can succeed in pushing Office 365 out of the enterprise doldrums, and at WPC 2012 in early July it announced new reseller terms and incentives for Office365.

Wes Miller at Directions on Microsoft says the announcement could well have the desired effect. "It is significant in two ways. First, this is a very big thing for resellers, and will encourage them to help drive momentum.

Second, resellers can in turn both help inform and motivate customers who may be either on the fence or not even considering 365. And it also enables the reseller to help bring in partners they're experienced with to assist in migration, one of the pieces that can terrify an organization and completely stall out a migration."

By the time Office 365 celebrates its second birthday, it's likely that enterprises will have another option to consider in the shape of Office 2013--a hybrid productivity suite that offers on-premise applications, the same applications streamed from the cloud, plus cloud-based content storage.