On Thursday, we released a new set of Office 365 plans tailored to meet the needs of businesses ranging in size from one to approximately 250 employees. The new plans are specifically designed for small and midsized businesses (SMBs) at a price point that makes Office 365 an easy decision.

The new Office 365 plans provide the applications and services SMBs need to be productive and successful. They offer more flexibility, with the ability to mix and match plans to meet specific employees’ needs. In addition, the new plans provide more value by offering additional services like Yammer for social networking within a company.

The new Office 365 plans for SMBs are:

Office 365 Business: The full Office applications – Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and Publisher – and OneDrive for Business cloud storage, which allow SMBs to access, edit and share documents across their Windows PC, Mac, iPad, Windows tablet and smartphone.

Office 365 Business Essentials: The core cloud services for running a business – business class email and calendaring, Office Online, online meetings, IM, video conferencing, cloud storage and file sharing and much more.

Office 365 Business Premium – Get everything from both the Office 365 Business and Business Essentials plans.

We made these changes to the existing Office 365 plans in response to feedback from our customers, and as part of our longstanding commitment to bring the benefits of cloud-based productivity to every SMB.

Whether people work for large or small companies, nowadays they regularly work from multiple locations and on multiple devices during their day—maybe checking email on their phone over breakfast, catching up on news from their tablet during the commute, and from their laptop at the office. According to the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), 62 percent of small business employees use mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets to access their email, which is up from 39 percent just three years ago.

Given this new norm, SMBs are realizing that their competitive advantage comes from what they do with technology in and out of the office. The same BCG study referenced above found that tech-savvy SMBs – those using modern technologies such as the cloud – grew their revenue 15 percentage points faster than their counterparts using less technology.

Sky Zone Indoor Trampoline Park, which has locations across the United States, is one such tech-savvy business. The company was growing fast, and to keep pace it chose Office 365 for its comprehensive email and collaboration capabilities. Sky Zone saved $8,800 in email archive renewal fees on the first day it implemented Office 365, and the company predicts the switch will save it more than $1 million over the next five years. Learn more about Sky Zone’s story – and similar stories from other SMBs that have adopted Office 365 – here.

As always, small and midsized businesses have to be smart about their technology investments. Cloud services like Office 365 aren’t just affordable, they’re transformational for SMBs. They’re easy to deploy, easy to manage and give SMBs a competitive advantage.

To learn more about how Office 365 can help, talk to a technology consultant or sign up for the new plans here.

Tags: Cloud Computing, Office 365