Microsoft unveils pricing for Office 2013 and Office 365

Microsoft has certainly been keeping busy this month with its upcoming Windows 8 operating system. While we still don’t have a concrete release date for the upcoming Office 2013 suite, the Redmond-based company has now announced the official pricing.

According to the press release, standalone versions of the software in the suite will be available for activation on a single machine. Along with this, the entire suite will also be available in the form of different packages, depending on the needs of the users. Office Home and Student 2013 containing Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote, will cost $139 (roughly Rs. 7500), Office Home and Business 2013 – which contains all the previous software, along with Outlook – will cost $219 (roughly Rs. 11840) and the high end Professional package containing all the previous software and adds Access and Publisher to the list, will cost $399 (roughly Rs. 21560).

Now has official prices

The subscription to Office 365 Home Premium will cost $99 (around Rs 5,350) per year and will give you 20GB of SkyDrive storage and 60 minutes of calling on Skype per month, along with the ability to access the software on up to five different computers. There will also be a 30 day free trial available. Office 365 Small Business Premium will cost $149 (Rs 8,050 approximately), and includes all the apps, 25GB of Outlook space, organisation-wide 10GB cloud storage on SkyDrive, 500 MB of SkyDrive storage per member of the organisation and website hosting.

Buying Office 2010 entitles you to a free upgrade to Office 2013, or one free year of Office 365.

Back in August, it was revealed that Office 365 will be bundled with Airtel’s internet services. Under the agreement, Airtel will be able to power SMBs with access to Microsoft Office 365, addressing their connectivity and productivity requirements while allowing them to focus on their core business activities. Office 365, along with Airtel’s DSL and Internet Leased Ports/Lines (ILP) services, will empower SMBs with the option to create a public facing website with their own domain name, access to the latest releases from Office 365, state-of-the art anti-virus & anti-spam solutions and most importantly, anytime, anywhere access to documents and emails with best experience delivered on smartphones using Airtel’s network.

Office 365 poses to be the next leap of productivity for businesses in India, especially SMBs and puts the world-class collaboration tools at their doorstep:

• World class solution: It provides leading collaboration tools with enterprise-class security and a financially-backed Service Level Agreement. In the past, world-class collaboration tools were simply out of reach for most SMBs in India. Today, Office 365 provides  productivity and collaboration solutions to the SMBs which were only available to larger enterprises earlier.
• Affordability: SMBs prefer a scalable environment and to meet their expanding needs, Office 365 offers an affordable and predictable monthly cost.
• Ease of Management: Office 365 provides ease of management, because it is a product ready to use. It eliminates the hassle of managing an IT team and helps SMBs cut down their IT expenditure heavily.
• Commitment to Privacy, Security and Compliance:  Office 365 provides industry leading privacy and security controls that are independently certified and audited by third parties. Office 365 is the first major business productivity public cloud service to have implemented the rigorous set of physical, logical, process and management controls defined by ISO 27001. The Microsoft Trust Center contains up-to-date disclosures relating to Office 365 Security, Privacy, Regulatory Compliance, Audits and Certifications.