Here is One Reason Why Office 365 Will Surprise You in 2016

2015 is globally regarded as the year when Office 365 truly arrived, making its presence felt among workplace dashboards across the world. Microsoft has been brutally honest last year, clearly indicating that it wants its cloud offerings to be the only choice for businesses considering migrating to virtual, Big Data. The approach is now becoming clearer now that it seems Office 365 is ready to step out of its comfort zone and rock 2016.

What are we talking about?

Microsoft is taking Office 365 farther than we could have ever anticipated—into the niche of vehicle dashboards. Yes, via a strategic partnership, Office 365 will now make its presence felt among automobile dashboards. The engagement factor includes automobile manufacturers and consumers apart from enterprises that specialize in retailing aftermarket car digital systems. While we have been talking about Office 365 making organizational data more collaborative, on-the-go, this partnership will literally make Office 365 on-the-road!

Automobile Digitization Takes a Quantum Leap in Data On-the-Drive

This is not about just another addition to the gamut of digital apps that automakers offer these days. This unique partnership will allow Microsoft bringing its productivity apps like Word, Excel and PowerPoint, with complete functionalities, to cars. This amalgamation of Office apps with automotive technologies might pave the road for other such partnerships. What is being termed as “Office 365 Car Collaboration” is essentially about making the cockpit more workable rather than being more digitalized. There are more than anticipated music streaming and data connectivity options in cars. However, none of these options is about making the cockpit being your data accessibility, collaboration and sharing medium.

Not “Exactly” Working While Driving

Office 365 along with Skype (for Business) and Microsoft’s perceptive software, called Cortana, caters to folks who want their work data accessible easily via voice activation. The simplest things that mean desk hours being consumed, like scheduling meetings, can now be done instantly. Leveraging workers on-the-move without the need to manually input codes or phone numbers, this Microsoft offering helps to respond to emails and set up webinars without any tangible handling. You can interpret this as a cloud-ready Office 365 productivity suite that does not encourage being distracted when driving. More details will rollout soon, such as being an inbuilt feature in new cars or as an option that requires new subscription.

What are the possible near future scenarios?

The next step in this direction is obviously more cloud apps and even Telematics bundled as a part of the wireless services available to the driver and those seated at the back. Forecasting at the moment is a bit risky because this segment has just opened but with black box technologies being simplified and the cloud becoming more elaborate, in-vehicle real time data transmission across traveling employees can add to the overall productivity.

Another turf battle outside the smartphone and cloud arena?

Industry experts are reading into this as Microsoft trying to challenge Google in an arena that has been ruled by the search engine giant with regular updates about developing better GPS capabilities and driverless cars. The more interesting, and understated, competition remains in which of these efforts will be relevant for mass consumption. Also, will this lead to a Microsoft versus Google war in the automobile arena?

We are waiting…eagerly!

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