Is Your Organization Prepared for the Wave?

The Office suite of products is one of, if not the most, widely used document creation and communication platforms on the desktop in the world. In fact, during the first year of availability Office 2010 sold more than 100 million copies. Over 750 million users have a version of the Office suite in use on their desktop or laptop pc. As of June 2012, the internet usage statics site estimates that about 2.4 billion users are on the internet. With just over 7 billion people on our planet, that is about 34% of the humans on earth using the internet. If an estimated 750 million copies of Office are installed, that equates to about one third of the users on the internet. With that being said, think about how many copies of the Office suite are installed across the enterprise where Windows and Office have reigned supreme for so long!

With a new flood of social networking, cloud storage and the shift to BYOD, those 2.4 billion internet users are sharing information in ways that have never been done before. Things like SkyDrive, Dropbox and other cloud storage platforms make it very easy for consumers to save and share data in the cloud, making it accessible to other users and various other personal devices very easily. Networking tools like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are making it easier for people to find and connect with one another easier and faster than ever.

So how do enterprise IT departments bring these methods of communication and collaboration to the corporate environment? Enter Wave15, or what may be better known as the 2013 release of the Office suite of products, including: Exchange 2013, SharePoint 2013, Lync 2013 and Office 2013. The latest release of the suite brings many new features that are available to the internet population into the enterprise in a secure, stable, scalable, compliant and integrated solution. Coupled with the already largely installed desktop suite of Office in the new 2013 version, Wave15 promises to change collaboration and bring together the seasoned corporate professional who may be familiar with a few, or all, of the products and the new workforce of users who expect that these forms of communication and collaboration are available to them. Below are just a few of the new features that are available in the next “Wave” of the Office suite which is available today.

  • Site Mailboxes
  • SkyDrive Pro
  • Follow Me, Blogging, Communities and Profile enhancements
  • Unified Search
  • Unified eDiscovery
  • Apps for Office 2013 – included and integrated into SharePoint and Exchange 2013
  • Public instant message connectivity
  • Web conferencing with full audio and video support
  • Persistent or “group chat”
  • Unified user experience across multiple device types and browser experiences
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