Office 365 at 9:45 PM

"BPOS seems history, welcome Office 365"

Recent hype about Office 365 drawn my attention a lot. So i thought of digging some information about the service. In first place one must ask "what is Office 365" ?

Well the answer is pretty straight forward and simple. It is a subscription service that combines the familiar Microsoft Office Web Apps with a set of web-enabled tools that are easy to learn and use, that work with your existing hardware, and that come backed by the robust security, reliability, and control you need to run your business.

Why Office 365 ?

Because of the Unique Selling Proposition of Office 365.
Powered by Microsoft Exchange Online

Office 365 gives you access to email, calendar, and contacts from virtually anywhere, at any time, on desktops, laptops, and mobile devices*—while it helps to protect against viruses and spam.

Work from virtually anywhere

Work from almost anywhere and get automatically updated email,calendar, and contacts on the devices you use most, including PCs, Macintosh computers, iPhone, Android phones, Blackberry smartphones**, Windows Mobile, and Windows Phones*.

Easy-to-manage email

Get professional, easy-to-manage email. Office 365 provides each user with a 25-gigabyte (GB) mailbox and lets them send email messages up to 25 megabytes (MB). Connect with Microsoft Outlook 2010 or Outlook 2007 and use all of the rich Outlook functionality you already know and use, whether you are connected to the Internet at home or in the office or you are working offline.

Simplify scheduling

Easily schedule meetings by sharing calendars and viewing them side by side, so user can see their colleagues’ availability and suggested meeting times from user's calendar. Access users email, calendar, and contacts from nearly any web browser while keeping the rich, familiar Outlook experience with Microsoft Outlook Web Application.

Business-class security

Help protect your organization from spam and viruses with Microsoft Forefront Online Protection for Exchange, which includes multiple filters and virus-scanning engines.

Highly competitive pricing structure
Microsoft plans to offer Office 365 to businesses with less than 25 employees for $6 per user per month; larger companies will pay between $2 and $27 per user a month. Remember money always matters.

Earlier Microsoft launched SharePoint, Exchange and Lync as online services in 2009, calling it the Business Productivity Online Suite, or BPOS. Customers are currently sending and receiving 167 billion messages every day from its cloud services (Ref:- Kurt DelBene, president of Microsoft's Office Division)

Now with Office 365 a new cloud-based version of a suite of productivity tools that combines SharePoint, Exchange, Lync (formerly Communications Server), and both the Office Web applications and the Office Pro Plus desktop client. Dubbed Office 365, the suite goes into beta today (sign up here). BPOS seems history, welcome Office 365.

Chris Capossela, senior vice president of Microsoft's Office Division said Microsoft has created what it feels is a highly competitive pricing structure, because it really wants to capture the small business market. Microsoft is including single sign-on access all of these services, Capossela said. Enterprises also have the option to get Microsoft Office Professional Plus desktop software on a pay-as-you-go basis. Microsoft is opening a limited Office 365 beta program in seven languages and thirteen countries around the world.

Hope Office 365 retain the familiar client experience that everyone knows and loves with a rich back-end.

ReferenceOfficial Office 365 Website.
Trial beta service of Office 365.
Learn about office 365.

AV in the Cloud: Affectation? at 11:31 AM

Although identified by Gartner as a top ten IT strategy for 2011, cloud technology has yet to realise its full potential in corporate IT departments – the promise of increased flexibility and scalability provided by the cloud is offset by ongoing concerns about the security of corporate data. So it is ironic that the cloud represents one of the most exciting and promising new channels for the development and use of anti-malware software.

A good fit for IT security

Cloud computing is an effective method for performing a number of IT security tasks associated with protecting users. First of all, cloud computing allows parallel data processing, i.e. it is ideal for tasks which can be divided into several parts and processed simultaneously, thus getting quicker results. This is crucial for current antivirus products.

In order to analyse a suspicious program it must be checked against lists of malicious and security software as quickly as possible. If this does not yield results, it must be compared to the signatures of known threats, its code must be scanned for dangerous instructions and its behaviour must be examined in an emulator. All of this research can be performed in parallel. Some processes can even be divided into even smaller parts, for example, database searches. Cloud analysis has a great advantage over analysis performed on a local machine as it allows all of the required detection technologies to be used, having first distributed them between several computers for analysis, thus providing faster and more qualitative research. Additionally, cloud data processing is ideal for reducing the load on a local machine.

Data processing using cloud services also contributes to the accumulation of extremely valuable information. This feature is also important in combating IT threats. The harvested information is necessary for the immediate neutralisation of all known threats, as well as for the detailed analysis of new malicious programs and the development of antivirus solutions.

There must be a continuous exchange of data between the cloud and the numerous local machines running security products. Local computers provide information about current threats which are analysed and neutralised using the cloud’s enhanced computing power, providing a continuous stream of information. Should a new threat appear on just one local machine, protection can be developed immediately and delivered to the other computers connected to the cloud. The bigger the cloud in terms of the number of local machines connected to it, the higher the security level.

Making the right antivirus decision

Antivirus products should incorporate all of the above mentioned advantages of cloud computing: rapid, deep, parallel data processing, reduction of load on local computers and constant accumulation of valuable information about IT threats.