Microsoft Office users have a new way to use the productivity suite in the cloud.

Starting today, Microsoft Office 2016 is available as a cloud application from the nGenx Cloud Application Catalog. Purchasers can choose Microsoft Office 2016 as a stand-alone solution via Office365. Or they may purchase the suite through nFinity nWorkspace (Office 365 or Microsoft Service Provider License Agreement), the company’s workspace as a service (WaaS) platform. Licenses come as a monthly subscription with no annual commitments.

Through nFinity nWorkspace, nGenx’s desktop virtualization solution, users have cloud access to Microsoft Office 2016—or any of the 1,800 applications in the company’s catalog—from any device, whether it’s a PC, Mac, tablet, Linux thin client or a smartphone, said JD Helms, president of nGenx. All they need is an Internet connection.

“We carve up a single machine that looks and feels like a desktop to support 10, 20 or 30 users on a machine,” he said. “They get access to the application as if it were a traditional computer.”

nGenx ensures the deployment and transition to Microsoft Office 2016 in the cloud is performed smoothly. It also provides support via the telephone to help with access issues, Helms said.

To further help Office 2016 customers use the suite in the cloud, nGenx has joined the Microsoft Office 365 Shared Computer Activation (SCA) Program. The program allows multiple Office 365 users to share the same hardware in a customer dedicated self-hosted environment, on a dedicated third-party hosted infrastructure or in Azure. Now, customers can bring their own licensing and don’t have to pay an additional licensing fee when deploying Office 2016 to the cloud.

The “bring your own license” (BYOL) option applies to other applications, as well, Helms said.

“A lot of software companies don’t have a cloud solution. Customers will say, ‘Here’s the software I run and here’s my license. Can you help me,’” he said. “And we’ll certify it and run it on a virtualized machine for them.”

Business continuity and security

All applications and data are backed up and maintained when run through nFinity nWorkspace, ensuring critical applications continue to operate should there be a disruptive incident, Helms said. And the control environment gives administrators visibility and control over all users.

Customers also don’t have to worry about security, he said. nGenx hosts applications and data in secure cloud environments, including Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure. The company also controls data with defined security policies, and its data centers are SSAE 16 certified.

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