Whether you like it or not, Cloud computing is here to stay. For many businesses, both big and small, it is making us all more connected and improving office procedures and upping our collective productivity. Whilst the early days of cloud computing may have been all about security, the latest vibe is how it is pushing business forward and, in the process, saving a good deal of money on IT support.
There’s no doubt that this growth has been supported by our increasing use of a number of portable devices such as smartphones and tablets. That means your cloud desktop is now a thing that operates on the move, travelling with you across the world, keeping you in contact with the office, business associates, and consumers whether it’s at home in Brighton or 5am in Beijing.
In short, we are no longer tied to one PC at a desk but can network and develop and collaborate anytime and anywhere we wish. For those of you who remember the humble floppy disk, we’ve come a long way in the last twenty years or so. Cloud hosting has grown for both consumers and businesses and, for many of us, has become part of our daily online lives – we save photos, post messages, swap data and provide solutions at much greater speed than we ever have before.
Benefits of a Cloud Service for SMEs
For small and medium sized businesses, having a cloud desktop is one of the most practical operational decisions that can be taken. It’s cheaper and more flexible than investing in onsite hardware without the capital expenditure and therefore a more eco-friendly way of operating. Disaster management, an important component for many businesses nowadays, is also taken care of because all data is held safely away from the business which means it can be easily recovered if something terrible happens to the office environment or equipment such as mobile phones.
The rise in cloud subscription platforms also gives many businesses access to feature rich products that would be more costly if they were installed separately. That means employees can have access to a wide variety of software for just a set monthly fee that doesn’t break the bank and can be adjusted depending on individual needs. Finally, one of the main advantages of a cloud desktop is that it allows for a greater degree of collaboration with users able to work with each other whilst outside the office.
With the enhanced security that comes with cloud services nowadays, SMEs get all the power they need from their operating platform at a fraction of what it would cost them back in the old days.
Moving to a system like the M2 Cloud gives businesses all the flexibility and security, as well as useful tools such as Microsoft Office 365, which dramatically improves connectivity and productivity. Provisions can be tailored to individual businesses which means they don’t end up with programs that have little operational value and only pay for what they really need.
Five years after rolling out Office 2011 for Mac, Microsoft has made a first public preview of its successor, Office 2016 for Mac, available to testers for download.
Microsoft already has updated OneNote and Outlook (available in limited preview form) available for the Mac. On Thursday, the company is delivering refreshed public previews of those two apps in addition to the first public previews of the 2016 versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint, and is making all five apps available to anyone running Yosemite (Mac OS 10.10).
The Office for Mac 2016 preview is available for download from Microsoft’s Office.com preview site, and can be run alongside Office for Mac 2011.
Microsoft plans to deliver regular updates to the preview, and will let testers know via a notification from the Office for Mac Auto-Update tool. Every new preview build will expire roughly 60 days after it’s posted. The final preview build will continue to function for roughly a month after Office 2016 for Mac becomes generally available, sometime this summer, officials said. That’s likely to be several months ahead of the Office 2016 for Windows release in the second half of 2015. Officials said they’d have more news to share soon about opening up the Office 2016 for Windows suite publicly. (The Windows version has been in private testing for several months.)
Microsoft’s goal with Office 2016 for Mac is to make it look and feel more like Office for Windows (and other Office suite flavors), while not losing the styling that makes the suite feel like it’s built for Mac OS X, said Eric Wilfrid, director of Office product marketing.
The updated Mac suite includes a newly designed Ribbon that’s similar in formatting and organization to the Office for Windows Ribbon. The suite includes full support for retina displays and is built to be “cloud connected,” so it’s tightly integrated with OneDrive, OneDrive for Business, SharePoint and Office 365.
Office 2016 for Mac allows users to access files across all their devices running Office by signing in with their Office sign-in credentials. This way, a user could start writing a document on Office for Android, access it later on Office 2016 for Mac and then finish it on Office for iPad, while always having access to the most up-to-date version.
In the new version of Word 2016 for Mac, Microsoft has added threaded comments to improve coauthoring. In Excel, there’s now support for the same keyboard shortcuts as Office for Windows users have. The PowerPoint 2016 for Mac update adds the same presenter view as is available in PowerPoint for iOS.
So far, as is the case with the Office 2016 for Windows private preview, new features and functionality seem rather limited for the next version of Office for Mac. So what took Microsoft so long to bring the coming version to market?
Wilfrid said that Microsoft shifted gears after rolling out Office 365 and decided to focus on Office 365 and prioritize some of the new Office mobile releases, such as Office for iOS.
Office’s focus is now on cloud connectivity, he said, noting that anyone who has a current Office 365 subscription with support for downloadable versions of the Office suite apps will get Office 2016 for Mac as soon as it is released for no additional cost. Microsoft is not yet releasing Office 2016 for Mac pricing for those who don’t have an Office 365 subscription.
This story originally posted as “Microsoft delivers first public preview of Office 2016 for Mac” at ZDNet.
Microsoft Office 365, a cloud-based productivity service hosted by Microsoft and managed by Aperio IT, provides anywhere access to your familiar Office applications, email, calendar, HD video conferencing, and most up-to-date documents across your devices—all for one predictable fee. With Office 365 your organization can take advantage of the latest Office client and enterprise-ready tools on virtually any device—from laptops to tablets to smartphones—without having to upgrade your organizations servers. With a financially-backed 99.9% uptime guarantee, best-in-class virus and malware protection, automatic backup and server patches, and geo-redundant data centers, Office 365 delivers business continuity that’s easy to set up and manage and doesn’t require upfront server costs. With Office 365 you get the best value to fit your changing needs as you grow your business.
Visit https://aperio-it.com/office365-it/ to sign up for a free demo today.
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