RIM and Microsoft Team up to Offer BES to Office 365 Files

Office 365 is Microsoft’s cloud offering for all your Office documents. No matter where you are or what computer you’re on, you can access your documents via the web. It makes sense that Windows Phone devices can access Office 365 documents for mobile productivity even if you’re not on your “computer”.

Since most if not all corporations are using a combination of Microsoft applications, but are still issuing its employees BlackBerry phones; it just makes since that RIM is now offering mobile access to Office 365 services via its BlackBerry Business Cloud Services beta (in other words, BES for Office 365).

Simply put, your company-owned BlackBerry will be able to access not just your email, contacts, and calendars in Outlook, but Word/Excel/PowerPoint docs as well as more enterprise-heavy stuff like Sharepoint…all from the Office 365 cloud, but with BlackBerry Enterprise Server-level security that the company’s IT guy is already familiar with.

Other features include but are not limited to:

Single login

Your login credentials for Office 365 are the same for BlackBerry Business Cloud Services

BlackBerry Balance Support

Not really feeling the old-school BlackBerry your company is offering? BBCS Offers the ability to use your personal BlackBerry to access corporate info without messing with your personal info via BlackBerry Balance

Self-Service Web Access

Basic operations that can be handled by the user (backup/restore data, changing passwords, wiping a device, etc) can be done via the web.

Wireless Activation

setting up a new phone or switching phones can be done wirelessly – no tethering to a service to download IT policies

BlackBerry Business Cloud Services is free for current customers of Office 365 Midsized and Enterprise Business subscribers and is currently in public beta. For more information and to sign up for the beta, visit the BlackBerry Beta Zone