Will Office 365 help Mac OS?

It looks like a new version of Office is on the cards, and this release could prove very useful for those who want to bring their Macs into the workplace.

Microsoft on Monday announced that it would be hosting an Office 365 event on Tuesday 28 June at its offices in New York City. With chief executive Steve Ballmer due to appear, a full relase for the Office 365 cloud service is all but assured.

So, with Microsoft set to launch web-based versions of Office apps, do Mac users have something to look forward to?

Last month, Microsoft posted a short Q and A entry discussing how Office 365 will impact Mac users. In short, not all of the Office 365 features will be enabled for Mac users, but key items such as SharePoint will be offered.

So while the choices might be a bit limited, Mac users have more reason than ever to insist on being able to use their platform of choice in the office environment, and unless current trends shift dramatically away from cloud-based services, the next version of Office for Mac will be even more integrated into a web-based platform.

Which brings up the question, will this be the suite that finally brings the Macintosh en masse into the enterprise space? Will administrators and CTOs, now having more support for the Office platform, finally cave in and let Macs run in computing environments that are increasingly placing the browser above the operating system in terms of importance?

The Office 365 release may not blow open the dam for OS X systems immediately, but it certainly looks to increase the pressure.