Microsoft Office 365 Launching June 28

Microsoft will unveil Office 365 on June 28, the company confirmed Friday.

"June 28th is the date for General Availability of Office 365! > 100,000 real customers on beta...Partners, are you ready???" Jon Roskill, corporate vice president of Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Group, said via Twitter.

Microsoft also sent out invitations to a press-only Office 365 event, which will take place on June 28 in New York City. Steve Ballmer will be there to discuss the "latest about Office 365," according to the invite.

Office 365 is a cloud-based, monthly-subscription solution that comes in two versions, one for small businesses and one for enterprises. The small business edition is geared towards organizations that have fewer than 25 employees. At $6 a month per user, this version will offer Office Web Apps, Exchange Online, Sharepoint Online, Lync Online, and an external Web site for the subscribers.

The enterprise edition has a spate of offerings. The monthly subscription rate ranges from $2 to $24 per user. Subscribers will have access to Microsoft Office Professional Plus desktop software, email, voicemail, instant messaging, extranets, Web portals, enterprise social networking, and voice, video, and Web conferencing.

Microsoft began beta testing Office 365 in October 2010 with a number of organizations. In , the beta was opened to the general public. Around this time, Microsoft also unveiled an app store to accompany Office 365. The initial offering had 100 apps and 400 professional services from more than 16,000 Microsoft cloud partners.

It seems that Office 365 is Microsoft's attempt to go head-to-head with Google in the cloud. The search engine giant's cloud offerings are free, but Microsoft doesn't seem to mind introducing a tiered payment plan for its cloud services. Microsoft even has a special site to compare Office 365 and Google Docs.

In December 2010, the U.S. General Services Administration to Google Apps. Microsoft had this to say in response: "It's no secret that large public sector organizations have consistently valued Microsoft's cloud offerings not only because of our deep understanding of enterprise organizations, but also for their ease of use, security, and privacy capabilities. Regardless of how organizations are thinking about the cloud, Microsoft provides a choice for their productivity needs; on premises, in the cloud or as a hosted solution. Google does not offer any such choice."

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