Microsoft rolled out “Office for iPad” – specifically Word, PowerPoint and Excel – as part of its vision to move customers to subscription-based, cloud services. To get the full editing and creation experience, mobile users will need an Office 365 subscription ($100/year for home users, $150/year for small businesses).
Microsoft also announced the Enterprise Mobility Suite, which is a set of cloud services to help businesses manage corporate data and services on laptops, tablets and smartphones. The new Microsoft Enterprise Mobility Suite (EMS) provides device, identity and access management with data protection from the cloud. EMS includes Windows Intune, Azure Active Directory Premium and Azure Rights Management Services,
In addition, the company announced the upcoming availability of Microsoft Azure Active Directory Premium and enhancements to Windows Intune. 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. Effectively, AAD acts as the “identity hub” in the cloud for single-sign on to Office 365 and hundreds of other cloud services.
Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s newly appointed CEO, said the launch represents the new “mobile-first cloud-first” world. He sees “mobile” and “cloud” as two facets of the same trend in connectivity.
“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 Nadella.
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/press/2014/mar14/03-27mobilecloudpr.aspx
