12 essential Microsoft business apps for the iPhone
Reports show it's becoming a cord cutter's world http://www.zdnet.com/reports-show-its-becoming-a-cord-cutters-world-7000036371/ Google quietly pushes out Android Lollipop 5.0.1 images http://www.zdnet.com/google-quietly-pushes-out-android-lollipop-5-0-1-images-7000036374/ Summary: As part of Microsoft's "mobile first, cloud first" mission, it has built up a large portfolio of consumer and business apps on every platform. In this roundup, I look at a dozen iOS apps that help IT pros and power users stay productive with an iPhone and Microsoft services.By Ed Bott for The Ed Bott Report | December 4, 2014 -- 00:03 GMT Previous | Next Image 1 of 13
The iPhone 6 and especially the iPhone 6 Plus work extremely well with Microsoft services, especially Office 365.
As far as I'm concerned, Apple's previous flagship phone, the 5S, was just too small to consider using with productivity apps. But the larger screens on the latest Apple phones have enough screen real estate to be genuinely useful.
In this gallery, I've brought together a dozen business-focused apps I have installed on the iPhone 6 Plus I've been using full time for the past month. My list includes a wide range of categories, with all apps available for free on the iTunes App Store.
The traditional Office apps are well represented, in Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and OneNote. You can do basic editing without a paid Office subscription, although the combination of these apps with an Office 365 subscription unlocks much more.
On the email side, I've included Acompli, which is the newest Microsoft app thanks to the company's purchase of the startup, announced just days ago.
Office 365 subscriptions work best with Microsoft's OneDrive storage. You can install separate apps for the consumer OneDrive service and OneDrive for Business. Microsoft plans to bring the two services more in sync, so it's possible that by this time next year there will be only a single app able to connect to either or both services.
Lync 2013 is available for iPhones and works especially well for video chats on the larger iPhone screens.
And finally, there are administrative tools designed primarily for IT pros, including a suprisingly good Remote Desktop client.
App Store listing for Acompli Email
After installing Acompli, I knew within about 10 minutes that it was going to replace every other email client on my iPhone.
Setup is simple, allowing you to connect to a Microsoft (Exchange or Outlook.com), Google (Gmail or Google Apps), Apple (iCloud), or Yahoo server for mail and cloud storage services. You can also add independent cloud storage services, such as Dropbox and Box. (There's no way to connect to third-party POP or IMAP mail servers at this point.)
The clean home screen offers unified access to mail, calendars, and contacts from multiple services that don't normally play well together, so Gmail and Exchange can finally get along.
If you have an Office 365 account that includes Exchange email and you own an iPhone or Android device (Acompli Email is available in the Google Play store as well), you need this free app.
Topics: Mobility, Cloud, iOS, iPhone, Microsoft
Ed Bott is an award-winning technology writer with more than two decades' experience writing for mainstream media outlets and online publications.
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