Office 365 Beta

Microsoft's Office 365 is a major re-branding and relaunch of the company's business cloud services. Previously offered as Business Productivity Online Services (BPOS), Office 365 brings together the 2010 releases of Exchange and SharePoint, along with the Lync unified communications platform. It's not just an online solution: depending on the service bundle you choose, there's an option to use a subscription version of the Office 2010 desktop productivity suite.

Microsoft plans to offer Office 365 in a number of service tiers, ranging from a stripped-down small-business version to one packaged for large-scale enterprises. The most attractive tiers bundle a full license to Office Professional Plus 2010 for each user, which is arguably Microsoft's greatest advantage over online-only competitors such as Google Docs.