Microsoft expands cloud services for mobile scenarios

SAN FRANCISCO, March 27, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Microsoft Corp. on Thursday announced several new and updated applications and services including Microsoft Office for iPad and free Office Mobile apps for iPhone and Android phones. Microsoft also announced the Enterprise Mobility Suite, a comprehensive set of cloud services to help businesses manage corporate data and services on the devices people use at work and at home. In addition, the company announced the upcoming availability of Microsoft Azure Active Directory Premium and enhancements to Windows Intune.

"Microsoft is focused on delivering the cloud for everyone, on every device. It's a unique approach that centers on people — enabling the devices you love, work with the services you love, and in a way that works for IT and developers," said Satya Nadella, chief executive officer for Microsoft.

Office productivity when and where you need it

Starting Thursday, Office 365 subscribers can simply add an iPad as one of their chosen devices included in their subscription benefits, and can create and edit documents with Word for iPad, PowerPoint for iPad and Excel for iPad. These apps are available as free downloads from the App Store, enabling people to read and present documents, spreadsheets and presentations. Office for iPad brings full file fidelity across Office on PC, Mac, tablet and phone, and along with cloud storage from OneDrive or OneDrive for Business your files are up to date, wherever you need them on whatever device you want to use. Office for iPad apps have a familiar look and feel that are unmistakably Office but are built from the ground up for iPad, factoring in the unique nature of touch and functionality native to iPad along with what people most commonly want to do on a tablet. More detail on today's announcements can be found in the Office blog.

Office 365 is Microsoft's fastest-growing commercial product ever, with increasing popularity of the subscription service among consumers because of the ability to move between devices, share subscription benefits with household members with an Office 365 Home subscription, and have constant access to important Office documents online. In addition to Office for iPad announced on Thursday, Microsoft also offers other iPad-optimized productivity applications, including OneNote, Dynamics CRM, Dynamics AX, Bing, Lync, Outlook Web Access, OneDrive, OneDrive for Business, Yammer and Skype.

Comprehensive services to help IT embrace bring your own device and the move to software as a service

Customers continue to use more devices and services, and IT needs an integrated and economical way to manage it all. The new Microsoft Enterprise Mobility Suite (EMS) provides comprehensive device, identity and access management with data protection from the cloud. EMS includes Windows Intune, Azure Active Directory Premium and Azure Rights Management Services, to give IT the tools they need to help protect corporate assets and enable people to work on the devices they love. 

The new Azure Active Directory Premium delivers cloud-based identity and access management with single sign-on to over 1,000 popular software as a service (SaaS) applications, self-service tools for users, and machine-learning-driven security reporting and anomaly detection. With Azure Active Directory Premium customers can reduce their IT costs and more easily manage their users, groups and SaaS application access.

Microsoft also announced additional enhancements to Windows Intune, including support for the Samsung KNOX platform, Remote to My PC capability for Android and iOS devices, and support for the next update to Windows Phone, continuing Microsoft's commitment to cloud-first mobile device management across all devices.

Availability

Microsoft Office for iPad is available Thursday in 29 languages. The apps require an iPad running iOS 7.0 or later. More information about Microsoft Office for iPad can be found on the Office blog. The new Windows Intune features and Azure Active Directory Premium will be available in April, and the Enterprise Mobility Suite will be available via Microsoft Volume Licensing channels on May 1. More information about these new enterprise mobility solutions is available at Microsoft's In the Cloud blog.

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq "MSFT") is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

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SOURCE Microsoft Corp.