Category: Office 365

Office 365 is a line of subscription services offered by Microsoft as part of the Microsoft Office product line. The brand encompasses plans that allow use of the Microsoft Office software suite over the life of the subscription, as well as cloud-based software-as-a-service products for business environments, such as hosted Exchange Server, Skype for Business Server, and SharePoint, among others. All Office 365 plans include automatic updates to their respective software at no additional charge, as opposed to conventional licenses for these programs—where new versions require purchase of a new license.

After a beta test that began in October 2010, Microsoft launched on 28 June 2011,[1] aimed originally at corporate users as a successor to Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS). With the release of Microsoft Office 2013, Microsoft expanded Office 365 to include new plans aimed at different types of businesses, along with new plans aimed at general consumers, including benefits tailored towards Microsoft consumer services such as OneDrive (whose integration with Office was a major feature of the 2013 suite).[2]