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The words social, integration, collaboration, and analytics reigned heavy at this year’s recent SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas. In short, Microsoft and its products are being re-designed to meet the IT needs of individuals, small and enterprise level businesses. Our team in attendance created a list of things that you might find interesting about the new and improved Microsoft Office.

1. Office 365 Goes Social and Gets Analytical

Back in 2012, Microsoft acquired the social networking company Yammer. Some predicted that it would disappear, however it is currently on the integration forefront for Office 365, specifically SharePoint. Microsoft is working on a solution to allow IT personnel to activate the social platform through SharePoint’s central admin console, making it easier to replace SharePoint’s default social experience with Yammer. Furthermore, using Yammer technology, Microsoft plans to release another social tool known as, “Inline Social.” This feature allows users to have conversations within documents stored in SharePoint online and OneDrive. Finally, Microsoft announced a new Office 365 feature called “Groups,” which automatically syncs conversations, calendars, emails and files through a Yammer feed so people can collaborate better.

On the big data front, Microsoft has two programs that it is excited to release through Office 365. Meet “Office Graph,” formerly “Enterprise Graph” on Yammer. Referred to as a behind-the-scenes “intelligence fabric,” it maps the relationship among people and information. The supporting application, “Oslo,” uses information from “Office Graph” to serve up the most relevant information for each user.

2. Office Tools Get Name Change and Begin to Unbundle

Say goodbye to SkyDrive and Office Web Apps; not the products of course, just the names. After a trademark dispute and some user feedback on the word “apps”, Microsoft decided to make the following changes:

That’s not it, OneDrive (formally SkyDrive) for business will be offered a-la-carte later this month. If do you have it as part of the Office Suite, you will be able to turn it on with new admin controls on the SharePoint Server 2013 Service Pack 1. This enables businesses to use cloud storage and sharing while keeping on-premise infrastructure as well.

3. Lync and Skype Have a Few Tricks up their Sleeve

Microsoft acquired Skype in 2011 for a record $8.5 billion. Since then, they have implemented voice connectivity between Skype and Lync. Next up, video integration. That’s not all. Mike Gregersen a director on the Microsoft Office team hinted there was more to come but remained quiet on specific details.

4. Microsoft Releases New APIs

New APIs means more opportunity for developers and mobile apps for users. With a recently released software development kit for Windows 8 and Android, Microsoft hopes encourage developers to build on-the-go productivity solutions through Office 365. Self-service site provisioning and support for OneDrive file actions are just some of the new APIs out there. Additionally, there is a new data loss prevention capability that allows businesses to manage, track and audit content.

5. Office 365 Attracts Record Level Growth

With 18 consecutive quarters of triple-digit growth and about 25 percent of Fortune 500 companies using Office 365, Microsoft can safely say that they put their eggs in the right cloud-based software basket. Cloud adoption among small businesses is even higher with a 250 percent growth rate in the last four quarters.

To learn more about Microsoft cloud solutions, fill out the contact form to the right or call us at 800-550-3795.

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