Microsoft, the software juggernaut has just announced the Personal edition of Microsoft 365 for India. The subscription charges have been kept as Rs 330/month or Rs 3,299/year. Office 365 Personal has been aimed squarely at individuals with the ability to install it on different devices owned by individuals. It can be installed on one desktop (Windows PC or a Mac), one tablet and any number of smartphones, thus offering a better integration of services for individuals.
Users get access to all the functionalities of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Publisher and Access as a result of the subscription. The fact that you can use it on all the devices gives the subscriber the functionality to use a service on one and view and edit it on the other so you can work on any one which you have access to at a certain point of time. Microsoft is giving 20 GB of cloud storage on OneDrive to subscribers of the device.
The subscription to Office 365 Personal is available through electronic retail chains like Reliance Digital, Croma and Microsoft’s own retail chain as well. Alongside the launch of the Office 365 Personal, Microsoft has also showcased its Bing Venue Maps for India. These have the functionality of seeing a store wise layout of shopping malls and has been available for 120 malls across Bengaluru, Delhi and Mumbai airports.
It is Microsoft’s answer to Google Indoor maps. The icing on the cake was the announcement that Skype group video calling for up to 10 people is now free. Microsoft is trying to create an ecosystem of its services by offering an integration across devices. Let us see how this model fares in India where piracy is rampant and the pirated versions come out within a few weeks of launch at a fraction of the price.
