Office 365 Video launches, like YouTube for serious business

Work today has evolved quite a substantially compared to even just a decade ago. If you ever tried to mention "Video sharing" to a boss back then, you will probably be met with a puzzled look, if not incredulity. But today, sharing content and information in the workplace has moved beyond documents and pictures. They even include videos. Because of that, Microsoft is rolling out Office 365 Video globally, a tool for hosting and sharing video content for work. Think of it like YouTube, except your IT would love it.

As part of the Office 365 family, this Video platform is meant to offer secure storage and access to company files. So whatever video needs your business might have, from training, to demos, to even social ones, you can now address all of those without having to resort to external services that might be beyond your control. It's really like YouTube in many ways, down to a "You May Also Like" recommendation system. Except with businesses in mind, which means allowing for very fine control over who has access to the videos.

And like YouTube, Microsoft's video player now supports HTML5 in addition to Flash for legacy browsers. This means that Office 365 Videos will play on any browser imaginable, whether they on desktops, tablets, or even smartphones. And due to that support, the video player gets optimized for the right screen size, what web designers love to call "responsive design".

Microsoft says that Office 365 Video also gets mobile, but by "mobile" here, they really the iPhone. An iPhone apps goes with the launch and it will let users not just watch the company's videos, they can also use it to create or upload their own. Sadly, no word on when, or if, Android will get a similar app, so those on Google's platform are left to use mobile web browsers and only for content consumption.

Office 365 Video is available for business customers worldwide. Sadly, that means that personal subscribers are left out of the video fun. But as Slack proved, both in numbers and in money, even smaller businesses and individuals like to have such media-rich tools at their disposal and you can bet that they'd also like this as well.

SOURCE: Microsoft