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Office 365 launches in SA, Kenya and Nigeria

By , Editor, ITWeb Africa
Africa , 28 Jun 2012

Office 365 launches in SA, Kenya and Nigeria

One year has passed since Microsoft officially unveiled its Office 365 software to the world, but the product is finally available in Africa - albeit in just SA, Kenya and Nigeria.

Microsoft’s 365 software; which includes programs such as ‘Office’ and ‘Exchange Online’, comes as a both a cloud service and an offline package, available at a monthly cost.

In June last year, the software was launched to 40 countries, but yesterday Microsoft expanded that offering to 48 countries while also adding another 23 languages to the suite.

“The reason why we’ve taken a year to launch it Nigeria, South Africa and Kenya is that we wanted to deliver a very high service to customers,” said Hennie Loubser, general manager, Microsoft West, East, Central Africa and Indian Ocean Islands.

Microsoft has veered away from building cloud servers in Africa to host Office 365, and African businesses and consumers will instead have to connect to the company’s European servers.

The company, though, says it has tested the bandwidth and latency for the three African nations’ businesses and consumers to make sure that the service is up-to-scratch.

However, it seems Africans these countries are set to rely on the company’s European servers for some time to come.

“We don’t have a datacentre in Africa and there aren’t plans to put one in Africa,” Loubser told ITWeb Africa.

“We’re hosting essentially out of Europe,” he said.

It is also unclear as to if, or when, other countries in Africa - apart from SA, Nigeria and Kenya - are to get the product.

Yet despite the seemingly limited availability of Office 365 on the continent, Africa is a key growth market for Microsoft.

Loubser says that Microsoft, together with its hardware partners, ships about 7 million PCs into Africa each year, and that the market grows by 16% every year.

Pricing and availability

Office 365 for small businesses and professionals costs $6 per user per month, while the package for enterprises starts from $2 per user per month.

For $24 per user, per month, organisations can also get Office Professional Plus.

Businesses and consumers in SA, Kenya and Nigeria can buy Office 365 by signing up at www.office365.com or from one of Microsoft’s local service providers.

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