Microsoft is making news about Office 365 at 7 a.m. today. Chief Executive Steve Ballmer is hosting an event in New York at Skylight Studios.

Office 365 is a new cloud service from Microsoft that rolls together Office Web apps, Exchange email, unified communication software Lync, collaboration software SharePoint all delivered as a monthly subscription of $6 per user. For a higher price, businesses can also get the full version of Office 2010. The service will compete with Google Apps, which costs $5 per user per month.

Small and medium businesses could theoretically save thousands of dollars because they would not have to install and manage in-house servers.

It's unclear whether Ballmer will announce that Office 365 is available to buy and use today -- as corporate vice president Jon Roskill tweeted earlier -- or whether he will announce a date when it will be ready.

Office 365 is a new version of Microsoft's Business Productivity Online Services, also known as BPOS.

By: DocMemory
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