Microsoft Office 365 (often called Microsoft 365 or Office 365) is a Web-based version of Microsoft’s Office suite of enterprise-grade productivity applications.
Office 365 is delivered to users through the cloud and includes Exchange Online for email, Word, SharePoint Online for collaboration, Lync Online for unified communications, and a suite of Office Web Apps, Web-based versions of the traditional Microsoft Office suite of applications. However, choosing between Office 2013 desktop software and the new Office 365 is a dramatically different decision than in the past.
There is a clear distinction between the two options. Office 2013 describes only the desktop applications. By contrast, Office 365 is a Web-based platform that pairs the Office applications with cloud storage. In the past, though, the Office 365 versions of the software had limited features and capabilities compared to the full desktop versions, and if you didn’t have an Internet connection you didn’t have Office.
The beauty of Office 365 is that you get more than just Office 2013 for your money—it also comes with benefits that Office 2013 lacks. It comes with an additional 20GB of SkyDrive storage and 60 minutes per month of international Skype calls. Office 365 also has a new feature called Office On Demand that enables you to stream virtualized versions of the full desktop software to any Windows 7 or Windows 8 PC.
