Software Giant Microsoft recently launched Office 365 and is already looking to make additions to its core hosted exchange – SharePoint and Lync Online.
Mary Jo Foley of Zdnet had recently blogged that the next two services to be added to Office 365 will be Dynamics CRM Online and Windows Intune, Microsoft’s PC Management and Security Service.
At the recently concluded Worldwide Partner Conference, Microsoft Business Solutions Corporate Vice President, Michael Park made a reference to two more services the company was seeking to add to Office 365 – A hosted Microsoft Project Service and a hosted Visio Service.
On the additions to Office 365, a Microsoft spokesperson commented as follows, “When talking about Dynamics CRM Online, Project, Visio and Office 365, Park was referring to the sales cycle and CRM Online attachment to Office 365 when customers buy that service, the way Project and Visio appeal to customers buying Office (in volume Licensing) today, not that Project/Visio will be part of Office 365.”
However, Foley says in a Zdnet blog that several of the partners that she spoke to at the Conference maintained that Microsoft plans to include Project and Visio services in office 365 in the future.
Apparently, several of the partners told Foley that they believed a launch of Project Online and Visio Online would likely be timed to arrive with its Office 15 Wave. Office 15 – the next version of Microsoft’s client and server Office wares is expected to be released by late 2012 or early 2013.
A handful of Microsoft hosting partners already provide the services of Microsoft Project Server, a project-management product.
Microsoft Visio is a commercial diagramming product. An application known as ‘visio services’, a part of SharePoint Server 2010 already exists. It allows users to share and view Visio drawings and update Visio drawings from various data sources.
However, on being questioned about the services, Microsoft officials refused to ‘comment on rumors and speculations.’
Microsoft officials reiterated that next year, Microsoft is planning to offer a Windows Azure-hosted version of the Dynamics NAV product. It plans to make all future versions of its four ERP products available on the public cloud via Azure, starting with NAV .
The company also announced Rapid Start for Dynamics ERP – a tool to help partners and customers more rapidly deploy, configure and customize Dynamics ERP offerings. The tool will become available later this fall and will be Azure hosted.