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Microsoft makes Office 365 available locally in India

Microsoft now offers users in India the ability to access Azure and Office 365 services from three local datacenters. Microsoft also is expanding Skype for Business preview services worldwide.
Written by Mary Jo Foley, Senior Contributing Editor

A couple of weeks after making Azure available locally in its three Indian datacenters, Microsoft is now doing the same with Office 365.

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On October 12, Microsoft said Office 365 services are now available locally to those in India from Microsoft's Mumbai, Pune and Chennai datacenters.

"With the launch of our three new datacenters in India, Office 365 becomes the first global commercial cloud service to provide productivity and collaboration services from within India," blogged Microsoft Corporate Vice President of Office 365, Rajesh Jha.

Microsoft also has committed to bringing Dynamics CRM Online services to its Indian datacenters in the first half of 2016.

In other Office 365-related news, Microsoft expanded availability of its Skype for Business services last week.

Back in July, Microsoft announced previews of three new Skype for Business services: Skype Meeting Broadcast; PSTN Conferencing and Calling; and Cloud PBX.

As of last week, Microsoft made the PSTN conferencing preview available beyond the U.S., to testers in 11 additional countries. Users in Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom can test the service starting this month. In November, users in Finland, Norway and South Africa also can test PSTN Conferencing.

Also as of last week, Microsoft expanded the Cloud PBX preview to make it available to customers worldwide, instead of U.S. only. The Cloud PBX with PSTN Calling service provides users with the ability to make and receive traditional phone calls in their Skype for Business client, and to manage these calls using hold, resume, forward and transfer. (For now, users may need Skype for Business Server software installed to use the service.)

Microsoft is enabling number portability for users of the PSTN Calling preview in the U.S., and voicemail for Cloud PBX preview users worldwide.

Skype Meeting Broadcast enables users to broadcast of a Skype for Business meeting on the Internet to up to 10,000 people, who can attend in a browser.

The various Skype for Business service previews are available to users with an Office 365 enterprise plan or Skype Business Plan 2. Microsoft officials said Cloud PBX will be generally available worldwide before the end of this year. PSTN Calling and PSTN Conferencing will be available in the pre-release markets before the end of this year.

"We will share pricing and licensing details when we are closer to general availability," officials said last week.

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