Well, the day has finally arrived.

Microsoft has launched Microsoft Office 365, its high-tech, affordable cloud based solution for small and medium businesses to get the best of the server side productivity solutions, earlier affordable by large scale businesses only.

Office 365 is immediately available for SMBs and Microsoft is leaving no stone unturned to reach out to small and medium businesses to get more and more users on board.

With Microsoft Office 365, small businesses will have all the server-side technologies for collaboration and productivity such as

• Microsoft SharePoint Online
• Microsoft Exchange Online
• Microsoft Lync Online

in an always-up-to-date cloud service. Office 365 will be available as a subscription based service, billed on a per-user-per-month basis. The standard package starts from $6/user/month but the costs can get substantially lower(as low as $2/user/month) for large businesses.

Microsoft Office 365 poses direct competition to Google App for Business, the paid version of Google Apps for high end cloud productivity solutions.

The most alluring part about Office 365 is the seamless integration of Office productivity solutions across desktop(Office 2010), browser(Office web apps) and Mobile(Office Mobile 2010) and the transfer of maintenance and technical troubleshooting to Microsoft. Both of these things.