Microsoft today announced a raft of new Office 365 plans for smaller businesses that will eventually supplant its extant offerings.

Office 365 Small Businesses Plans Now Available

The company is lowering the price of its most expensive smaller business offering — from $15 per seat per month to $12.50 — and raising the employee cap in some cases to 300 from 25. Microsoft has preserved a $5 per seat per month Office 365 option that includes its cloud products, but not desktop versions of Office proper.

The moves are customer-friendly because we are in a period of intense competition. Microsoft wants to bring people in from the cold of their past multi-year software buying cycles, while also shepherding smaller companies and businesses into its fold by selling them Office as a service at moderate price points.

Google, Apple, Dropbox, and Box want that same action. Far more than a trillion dollars in market cap is fighting for the right to store your files and help you edit them. Those firms would very much prefer if Office 365 were a flop.

Here are the new plans, via Microsoft:

Office 365 Business – The full Office applications – Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, and Publisher, with 1TB of OneDrive for Business cloud storage to access, edit and share your documents across your Windows PC, Mac, iPad, Windows tablet and smartphone.

Office 365 Business Essentials – The core cloud services for running your business – business-class email and calendaring, Office Online, online meetings, IM, video conferencing, cloud storage and file sharing, and much more.

Office 365 Business Premium – Get everything from both the Office 365 Business and Business Essentials plans.

The new options will go live on October 1.

Office 365 is becoming Microsoft’s Amazon Prime: A solution you pay for yearly that contains a kitchen-sink-like quantity of this and that. Microsoft, like Amazon, isn’t afraid of mixing in a slurry of services. If only Office 365 were as aptly named as Prime

via New Microsoft Office 365 Plans For Small Businesses.

Windows XP SP3 and Office 2003 will go out of support on April 8, 2014. If your organization has not started the migration to a modern desktop, you are late. Based on historical customer deployment data, the average enterprise deployment can take 18 to 32 months from business case through full deployment. To ensure you remain on supported versions of Windows and Office, you should begin your planning and application testing immediately to ensure you deploy before the end of support.

It means you should take action. After April 8, 2014, there will be no new security updates, non-security hotfixes, free or paid assisted support options or online technical content updates.

Running Windows XP SP3 and Office 2003 in your environment after their end of support date may expose your company to potential risks, such as:

Security & Compliance Risks: Unsupported and unpatched environments are vulnerable to security risks. This may result in an officially recognized control failure by an internal or external audit body, leading to suspension of certifications, and/or public notification of the organization’s inability to maintain its systems and customer information.
Lack of Independent Software Vendor (ISV) & Hardware Manufacturers support: A recent industry report from Gartner Research suggests “many independent software vendors (ISVs) are unlikely to support new versions of applications on Windows XP in 2011; in 2012, it will become common.” And it may stifle access to hardware innovation: Gartner Research further notes that in 2012, most PC hardware manufacturers will stop supporting Windows XP on the majority of their new PC models.

Get current with Windows and Office. This option has upside well beyond keeping you supported. It offers more flexibility to empower employees to be more productive while increasing operational efficiency through improved PC security and management. It also enables your organization to take advantage of the latest technology trends such as virtualization and the cloud.

Enterprise Customers: Microsoft offers large organizations in-depth technical resources, tools, and expert guidance to ease the deployment and management of Windows, Office and Internet Explorer products and technologies. To learn more about migration and deployment programs, please contact your Microsoft sales representative or Certified Microsoft Partner. Learn how to pilot and deploy a modern desktop yourself, download the free Microsoft Deployment Toolkit and begin your deployment today.

Small to Medium Business: There are many options for small and medium businesses considering moving to a modern PC with the latest productivity and collaboration tools. Small to mid-size organizations should locate a Microsoft Certified Partner to understand the best options to meet their business needs. If your current PC meets the system requirements for Windows 7 or Windows 8.1, you can buy Windows 7 Professional or Windows 8.1 Pro from a local retailer or Microsoft Certified Partner. If your PC does not meet system requirements, consider purchasing a new business PC with Windows 8.1 Pro.

windows office