Microsoft 365

Microsoft 365  is a product family of productive software, collaboration, and cloud-based services owned by Microsoft. This includes online services such as Outlook.com, OneDrive, Microsoft Teams, programs previously marketed under the name Microsoft Office (including Microsoft Windows, macOS, applications such as Word on mobile devices, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook)., and on the web, the enterprise products and services associated with these products such as Exchange Server, SharePoint, and Yammer. It also covers subscription plans containing these products, including those that include subscription-based licenses for desktop and mobile software, and host email and intranet services.

Some plans also included Microsoft Office 2010 software licenses. Following the launch of Office 2013, Microsoft began promoting the service as the primary distribution model for Microsoft Office Suite, incorporating user-centric plans integrated with services such as OneDrive and Skype, and emphasizing ongoing feature updates (unlike non-subscription licenses, where new versions are required to purchase a new license, and Feature updates are not received).

On April 21, 2020, Office 365 was rebranded as Microsoft 365, to emphasize the service’s current inclusion of products and services outside the core Microsoft Office software family (including cloud-based production tools and artificial intelligence features). Most products called Office 365 were named Microsoft 365 on the same day. This domain name remains on office365.com, while personal (non-academic/enterprise) accounts are on live.com. However, Microsoft changed that stance with the release of Office 2024 Preview Build in November 2023.

History of Microsoft 365

As Office 365

Microsoft first announced Office 365 in October 2010, starting with private beta with various entities, which resulted in a transition to public beta in April 2011, and reached general availability on June 28, 2011, originally intended for corporate users.  Faced with increasing competition from Google’s similar service Google Workspace, Microsoft has designed the Office 365 platform to “bring together” its existing online services (such as Business Productivity Online Suite) into “always the latest cloud service” that includes Exchange Server (for email), SharePoint (for internal social networking, collaboration, and public website). Link (for communication, VoIP, and conferencing). Initially projects were launched for small businesses and businesses.

The small business plan also featured a web app with Exchange Email, SharePoint Online, Link Online, web hosting via SharePoint, and enterprise plan that included office 2010 Professional Plus software and licenses per user for 24/7 phone support. After the official launch of the service, Business Productivity Online Suite customers were given 12 months to move from BPOS to the Office 365 platform.

With the launch of Office 2013, an updated version of the Office 365 platform was launched on February 27, 2013, extending Office 365 with the aim of new plans for a wide variety of businesses as well as new plans for general users, including benefits tailored to Microsoft users’ services such as OneDrive.  (Whose integration with Office was an important feature of the 2013 suite). Server components were updated in their respective 2013 versions, and Microsoft expanded the Office 365 service with new plans such as Small Business Premium, Midsize Premium, and Pro Plus.

A new Office 365 Home Premium plan that aims to give home users access to office 2013 suites for five computers, plus expanding OneDrive storage and facilitating 60 minutes of Skype calls monthly. The project is intended for mainstream users, especially those who want to install Office on multiple computers. A university plan was introduced, aimed at targeting postsecondary students. With these new offerings, Microsoft has started offering prepaid Office 365 subscriptions through retail outlets with general, permanently licensed editions of Office 2013.

On March 19, 2013, Microsoft detailed its plans to provide integration with enterprise social networking platform Yammer (which they acquired in 2012) for Office 365, such as the ability to use the same sign-on between the two services, collect shared feeds and documents, and completely replace SharePoint news feeds and social functionality with Yammer. Ability to do. The ability to provide a link to the Yammer network from the Office 365 portal was introduced in June 2013, with heavier integrations (such as the Yammer app for SharePoint and single sign-on) introduced in July 2013.

On July 8, 2013, Microsoft unveiled Power BI, a suite of tools for business intelligence and self-service data mining Office 365, to be released later in the year. Powerbait is primarily included in Excel, allowing users to use it. Power Query is a spreadsheet and graph-making tool using public and public private data, and also display performance data from geo visualization using the Bing Maps Power Map tool (previously available as a beta plugin called GeoFlow).

As a limited-time offer for some markets (but especially excluding the U.S.), Microsoft also offered a one-year free. Xbox Live gold subscription with office 365 home premium or any purchase of university subscription as of September 28, 2013.

In June 2014, the amount of one-drive storage offered to Office 365 users was increased from 20 GB to 1 terabyte. On October 27, 2014, Microsoft announced “unlimited” OneDrive storage for Office 365 users. However, due to misuse and a general reduction in storage options implemented by Microsoft, the 1 TB limit was restored in November 2015. It is considered a competitor to Trello and other dynamic team collaboration cloud services.

In April 2017, Microsoft announced that with the end of mainstream support for Office 2016 on October 13, 2020, access to   Office 365 hosted servers for OneDrive for Business and Skype for Business will not be available to those who are not using Office 365 Pro Plus or Office Perpetual in mainstream support. In July 2019, Microsoft announced that the host Skype for Business online service will be discontinued on July 31, 2021, redirecting users to the Microsoft Collaboration Teams platform as an alternative. Since September 2019, Skype for Business Online is no longer offered to new users.

In October 2017, the current Outlook.com premium service was discontinued and folded exclusively into Office 365, after which all personal and family users were upgraded to 50GB of storage.

Such as Microsoft 365

The “Microsoft 365” brand was first introduced as an enterprise subscription product at Microsoft Inspire in July 2017, replacing “Secure Productive Enterprise” services released in 2016, and combining Windows 10 Enterprise with Office 365 Business Premium, and enterprise mobility + security suites including Advanced Threat Analytics, AZURE Active Directory, Azure Active Directory, Azure Information Protection Microsoft Intune. Microsoft 365 is sold through Microsoft and its cloud services reseller network.

Starting users

On March 30, 2020, Microsoft announced that Office 365 consumer plans will be rebranded as “Microsoft 365” (a brand that Microsoft also uses for windows, Office 365, and the enterprise subscription bundle of security services) in place of office 365’s existing consumer plans on April 21, 2020.

It’s a super set of existing Office 365 products and benefits, located for “life,” productivity, and families, including access to the Microsoft Office Suite, 1 TB of additional OneDrive storage and OneDrive personal wallet access, and 60minutes of Skype calls every month. Microsoft also announced plans to offer a trial offer of third-party services to Microsoft 365 users, with companies such as Adobe (Creative Cloud Photography) Blankest, Creative Live, Experian and Headspace. After being a partner. Microsoft 365 Personal & Family successfully delivered Office 365 Personal and Home subscriptions, with no change in price.

The Office 365 brand is in use for its enterprise, education, healthcare, and government projects. “Over the years, our cloud production offering has grown far beyond what people traditionally think of as ‘Office’,” Microsoft said, citing examples such as Farm, Planner, Stream and Thames.

On October 13, 2022, Microsoft announced that it would phase out the Microsoft Office brand, in Favor of branding all products under the name Microsoft 365. This change came into effect from Office.com in November 2022, followed by Office mobile apps in January 2023. The Microsoft Office brand will still be used for legacy products, including subscription products that still have the name “Office 365” since previous Microsoft 365 rebranding, and “on-process”/permanently licensed Microsoft Office 2021.

Software and Services

Desktop Applications

Microsoft 365 desktop applications (formerly marketed as Microsoft Office) are primarily used on personal computers running Microsoft Windows, and are distributed as part of a Microsoft 365 subscription. They are installed using a “click-to-run” system that allows users to start using applications almost immediately, while files are downloaded in the background. Updates to the software are automatically installed, covering both security and feature updates. These applications were one of the core components of the early Office 365 service. If the user’s subscription expires, the applications simply enter read mode where the editing functionality is disabled. Full functionality is restored once a new subscription is purchased and enabled.

While there are still “on-process” or “perpetual” releases of Office released over a three-year cycle, these versions do not have access to new features or new cloud-based services as they are released on Microsoft 365.

All of these applications are also available on macOS, except access and publisher.

• Microsoft word is an application which is used for word processing.
• Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet editor.
• Microsoft PowerPoint is a presentation program.
• Microsoft OneNote is a note-taking program that collects handwritten or typed notes, drawings, screen clipping, and audio comments.
• Microsoft Outlook is a Personal Information Manager (PIM) that includes an email client, calendar, task manager, and address book.
• Microsoft Publisher is a desktop publishing app for Windows that is mostly used to design brochures, labels, calendars, greeting cards, business cards, newsletters, websites, and postcards.
• Microsoft Access is a database management system for Windows that   combines a relational access database engine (formerly jet database engine) with graphical user interfaces and software development tools. Microsoft stores data in its own format based on the Access database engine. It can also directly import or link data stored in other applications and databases.

Mobile and Web Applications

Word, Excel, and PowerPoint are available as mobile and web apps, which are usable for free with limitations, although they don’t include all of the functionality like the desktop version. Mobile apps were originally limited to Office 365 users, but basic editing and document creation have since been made free for personal use. An active subscription to Microsoft 365 is still necessary to unlock some advanced editing features, use apps on devices with screens larger than 10.1 inches, or use apps for commercial purposes. In February 2020, Microsoft introduced a new Microsoft Office app that integrates Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, replacing previous, separate apps for each.

The Microsoft Outlook apps for mobile are derived from Compel and Sunrise Calendar, which Microsoft acquired and discontinued.

Online Services and Apps

Some Microsoft 365 online services are usable without a subscription, but with limitations such as advertising and low storage limits.

• Outlook.com, an online webmail service originally launched under the name Hotmail, which also includes address book(s) and calendars.
• OneDrive, an online file storage service.
• Cloud-based versions of Office, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint on the web; they mainly compete with services like Google Docs.
• Microsoft Teams, a business communications platform.
• To do, a task management app.
• Clipchamp, an online video editor.
• Skype, an instant messaging and VoIP service.
• Microsoft Family Safety is a service that includes parental controls that can be used for web filtering, time limit, location sharing, and other features in Windows, Android, iOS, and Xbox devices.

Enterprise Servers and Services

Business and enterprise-based projects for Microsoft/Office 365 offer access to cloud-hosted server platforms on service-based software, including Exchange, Skype for Business, SharePoint, Microsoft Dictate, and Office on the Web. Through SharePoint’s One Drive for Business functionality (formerly known as SharePoint My Sites and SkyDrive Pro, and different from the consumer-oriented OneDrive service), each user also gets 1 TB of online storage. Some plans also include unlimited personal cloud storage per user.

Users can be added manually, imported from a CSV file, or configured for single sign-on with   a local active directory using active directory federation services. More advanced setups and features require the use of PowerShell scripts.

• SharePoint is a web-based shared platform. It is primarily sold as a document management and storage system, but the product is highly configurable and use varies considerably between organizations.
• The Microsoft Power Platform is a line of business intelligence, app development, and app connectivity applications.

Subscription Plans

Microsoft has also offered Office 365 subscriptions to students from institutions that have obtained an Office software license for their faculty. There are two separate backends for the product:

• Users plan to log in using a Microsoft account, also known as a “personal account.”
• Business, enterprise, and education projects log in using a user ID managed by Azure Active Directory, also known as a “work or school account.”

User

Aimed at mainstream users, both plans offer access to Microsoft Office applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Publisher, and Access) for home/non-commercial use on a single computer (Windows, MacOS, and mobile devices), with additional online-based services and access to premium creative content, OneDrive with advanced security. Storage TB, 60 minutes of Skype international calls per month (subject to area) and partner offers.

• Additional benefits include 1 TB of extra OneDrive storage and 60 minutes of Skype international calls per month (subject to area).  A version of the Personnel purchased on a discounted four-year plan, known as Office 365 University, allowing use on two devices by one user, was available to those in postsecondary institutions until 2019.
• Microsoft 365 Family (formerly Office 365 Home): Aimed at mainstream users and families; similar to personal, but to use on five devices per person by six users.

Difference Between Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Office

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