Do you Know About: SharePoint 2013 is on Cloud?

Do you Know About: SharePoint 2013 is on Cloud?

Posted by Sophina Dillard on Wednesday, 19 December 2012 0

“Microsoft is all in on the cloud” – said by Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft. Well at the end of November, trial version of this software was launched on the company's official website and it is valid for 60-days. It includes the following apps i.e. SharePoint, Lync, Access, Publisher, Exchange, Office, Outlook, Excel, OneNote, and PowerPoint which makes it perfect for Enterprise Platform.

Steve Ballmer (Microsoft CEO) speaks at the launch of the company's Microsoft 365 cloud service in New York

At the moment people are discussing over this “cloud-thing” a lot i.e. whether to go for it or not!  Let’s understand what SharePoint Cloud 2013 Office 365 is first.

The SharePoint 2013 "Cloud” model follows that Microsoft's has promise that they will deliver infrastructure software and applications as a cloud service first or at the same time with the release of the premises-based version of its key products. That came to life with last year's Dynamics CRM/Dynamics CRM Online duo. Now Microsoft is employing the same approach with the latest version of SharePoint Online in the Office 365 service and SharePoint 2013.

One of many unique new features in SharePoint 2013 and SharePoint Online is the new SkyDrive Pro, an advancement of the SharePoint Workspace. It raises the bar in synchronizing the content between SharePoint Sites and employees of various devices. SkyDrive Pro is demonstrated after the consumer-based SkyDrive service i.e. when Windows 8 and Office 2013 Bring SkyDrive to the Forefront, except it's developed into SharePoint and customers and partners can manage it.

If I talk about its features, they are en-numerous  Let’s talk over 10 Burning Features of this SharePoint 2013 at the moment. 

1. Easy Share content– In this, it shares a document with someone by simply clicking the share link.
2. Easy Add – This is useful for Content management. With drag and drop feature easily add content straight into any browser window.
3. Easy Access - access content from any browser or smartphone and even from iOS devices. You can sync content on to a device to and work on it offline.
4. My Task list – In this, users can view all tasks on project sites and can easily edit them in the browser window itself. These are later rolled up into “MySite” to show users a unified list of tasks including personal ones that have been added in SharePoint and in Exchange 2013.
5. Email integration – It means all team based communication is easily accessible from a single site. These emails live in an Exchange mailbox so are also fully functional from within the mail client.
6. Advance searching – You can search for people, content, chats, videos and reports and drilldowns via both i.e. via text and visual contents. Users can preview the documents comprising drilling down into the detailed one. Users can also takeout information based on past search behavior.
7. Cloud/Hybrid – Office 365 has the almost same functionality when compared to an on-premise in features areas. It means for greater workloads, e.g. an Intranet, users can choose to run it in on-cloud without loss of any functionality or speed. When it’s running on Office 365, Microsoft is responsible for management and maintenance of the service.
8. Collaboration with others contents – This is useful for items such as meetings notes via OneNote and placing the large documents or PPTS together where different users can own part of the content. This creates more rapid content amalgamation.
9. Achieved Application store – An organization can have an internal app store in it. It basically allows a control and security over which applications can be installed by the site owners and includes a user interface for requesting and managing the licenses. These can be internal applications or the purchased ones that can be run externally to the organization.
10. Customization possibilities – It offers for a customized content that can be exported outside of the SharePoint environment. It means the SharePoint environment is easier to manage and maintain. It can also be reused for existing application skills via the portal interface. It also provides Branding to the system. 

Furthermore, if I talk about the migration from the older version to the cloud one, it is again smooth and easy migration. They offers a serial approach to this migration i.e. if you are SharePoint 2007 users, firstly you have to migrate to 2010 version before moving to 2013. Plan and strategize accordingly before moving towards the new one. Currently, they are offering SharePoint at cost of –

• Office 365 Home Premium - $99.99/year
• Office 365 Small Business Premium - $149.99/year 
• Office Home & Student 2013 - $139.99
• Office Home & Business 2013 - $219.99
• Office Professional 2013 - $399.99 
• Office Small Business Premium offers its suite - $12.50/month (it can be used by up to 25 employees)
• Office 365 University - $79.99 for a four-year subscription, or $1.67/month