Features include:

Access documents from virtually anywhere:
* Cloud – With your phone, you can access Office documents that are stored on SkyDrive, SkyDrive Pro, or SharePoint.**
* Recent Documents – Office Mobile is cloud-connected. The documents you’ve recently viewed on your computer are readily available on your phone in the recent documents panel.
* Email Attachments – You can view and edit Office documents attached to email messages.

Office documents look stunning:
* Great-Looking Documents – Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents look great on your phone, thanks to support for charts, animations, SmartArt Graphics, and shapes.
* Optimized for phone – Word, Excel and PowerPoint have been optimized for the small screen of your phone.
* Resume Reading – When opening a Word document from SkyDrive or SkyDrive Pro on your phone, it automatically resumes at the place where you left off reading, even if you last viewed the document on your PC or tablet.
* Presentation Views – The Slide Navigator view in PowerPoint lets you browse slides faster, while speaker notes help you practice your presentation.

Make quick edits and share:
* Edit – You can make quick edits to Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents.
* Documents Remain Intact – Formatting and content remain intact when you edit Word, Excel, or PowerPoint documents on your phone.
* Edit While Offline – Your device doesn’t have to be continuously connected to the network to work on an Office document that is stored online. You can view and edit recently used documents even while you’re offline. Your changes will be saved online when your device reconnects to the network or to Wi-Fi.
* Create – You can create new Word and Excel documents on your phone.
* Comments – You can review comments that have been made in Word and Excel documents on your phone and add your own comments.
* Share – When you’re done with your edits or comments, simply send the document in email or save it to SkyDrive or SharePoint.

Requirements:
* An Office 365 subscription is required to use this app.
* Compatible with iPhone 4, 4S, and 5, iPod Touch 5th Generation. Requires iOS 6.1 or later.
* Microsoft Office 2013 on a PC is needed for features like recent documents and resume reading.

Office 365 ProPlus – the Office 365 version of the Office 2013 suite is made available to existing Office 365 subscribers with an eligible subscription today using the Office Deployment Tool. It will also be available directly in Office 365 once your tenant has been upgraded.

Some of the most popular enhancements to the service include:

Exchange Online

• Public Folders are back!
• Outlook Web App has new and improved look.
• SPAM filtering has bee improved with anti-malware protection.

SharePoint Online

• Better collaboration and control over external users.
• Integration of Yammer Enterprise (coming soon)
• SkyDrive Pro – offline sync for SharePoint Online document libraries.

Lync Online

• New and improved user interface.
• One click access for online meetings.
• New Lync Web App provides full meeting experience.

Office Pro Plus

• Tight integration with SharePoint Online allowing for users to save directly to the cloud.
• Office 2013 with up to 5 installs per user.
• Includes Office 2011 for Mac subscription for Apple users.

In addition to the new offering, Microsoft has added a new plan targeted towards small business, the Mid Size Office 365 plan or M Plan.  This offering includes the same features as E1 (Exchange 25GB Mailbox, SPAM Filtering, Lync Online, SharePoint Online) however it also includes Office Pro Plus 2013 with up to 5 installs per user.  The M SKU is available for $15/user per month.

The selection helps to solidify CloudBearing’s position as one of the top cloud consultancies forOffice 365 for education in the country. It also is yet another win for Office 365, which was selected over Google Apps, in the very competitive education market, much of which is transitioning to the cloud.

“Universities need technology experts to help them navigate the complicated regulatory environment and provide solutions with comprehensive security features that can help prevent data breaches and maintain sensitive data private in the cloud,” said CloudBearing CEO Nicholas Vossburg.

According to CloudBearing, the university was in need of a new messaging and calendar solution since its old systems were having difficulty keeping up with the changing needs of the campus both in terms of feature set and population growth. After evaluating Office 365 for education versus Google Apps, the UC Merced team indicated in a report that it preferred Office 365 for email, calendaring and collaboration. The campus will be rolling out 25 GB mailboxes for everyone; a modern calendaring system that directly integrates with mobiles devices, Outlook and the Web; SharePoint for document management and file sharing; and Lync which provide enterprise-grade instant messaging, audio/video conferencing and whiteboard capabilities.

According to CloudBearing, UC Merced is implementing Office 365 for education for 8,500 staff, students and faculty. Full migration is expected to be complete by spring 2013.

“Office 365 for education is transformative for universities as it provides enterprise-class capabilities for better communication and collaboration,” said Cameron Evans, Microsoft Education chief technology officer.

“More importantly, it helps students build know-how and skills that will enable success in the workplace. It also provides security and privacy protections that help educational institutions meet their compliance obligations such as HIPAA and FERPA.”

As a key part of its efforts to lead the industry, CloudBearing recently hired Gabe Loshbaugh, a former member of the Microsoft Office 365 for education team, to head its education efforts.

“With more and more colleges and universities moving into the cloud for security, efficiency, cost savings, regulatory compliance and a variety of other reasons, CloudBearing’s experts are uniquely qualified to help in the migration,” Loshbaugh said. “My extensive experience with the Microsoft Office 365 for education team is the perfect platform to move CloudBearing forward in becoming an industry leader.”

About CloudBearing
Based in Washington, D.C., CloudBearing was founded to help organizations successfully migrate to the cloud and leverage the resulting significant cost savings and benefits. For more information, visithttp://www.cloudbearing.com.

Duke University currently operates two on-site mail systems: DukeMail powered by Oracle and Microsoft Exchange.

Office 365 for Education was selected after a formal RFP and evaluation.  Duke plans to implement the solution in Q1 of 2013.

For more information please visit the Duke University Press Release.

Typically original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) along with Microsoft partners will receive the product first to ensure their products and services are prepared for the new release.

The official release to market is slated for Q1 of 2013.  Most of the rumors point to the end of January/beginning of February timeframe.

Interested in seeing the new release?  Microsoft has released a consumer preview site that allows users to try the new software and Office 365 services for free.  You can try the consumer preview here.

The expected release date for the products is after March of 2013, shortly after the anticipated January/February release of the new Office 2013 product suite.

For more information, check out ZDNet’s recent post.

Toyota will be running Office 365 exclusively in its North American offices and implementing a hybrid architecture for its overseas operations.

Additional details on the deal can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/9dv3qa9 

Pricing was recently announced for the suite.  Here’s a breakdown of the new cost structure:

Office 365 Home Premium

- Includes Office 2013 Subscription for up to 5 PCs or Macs (Macs will get Office for Mac 2011)

- SkyDrive Storage with 20GB

- $99.99 per Year

Office 365 Small Business Premium

- Includes Office 2013 Subscription for up to 5 PCs or Macs (Macs will get Office for Mac 2011)

- SkyDrive Storage with 20GB, Lync Online, InfoPath, Exchange Online 25GB Mailbox, and 500MB of Document Storage per User

- $149.99 per Year

It looks like Office 365 Small Business Premium will be replacing the previous Office 365 Professional Addition.

Office 365 Enterprise customers will still have the same benefits.  All E3 and E4 plan subscribers will get receive upgrades to Office 2013 at no additional charge.