Microsoft Office Web Apps are online companions to Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote, enabling people to access and do light editing or sharing of Office documents from virtually anywhere. I had given an overview in my previous post - Office Web Applications. This post is about getting access to the Office Web Apps for your organization and deploying it. Refer to the TechNet links given inline for detailed guidance.

Cost

• For consumers, Office Web Apps are free on Windows Live, by the use of a free Windows Live ID.
• For business customers, purchasing a volume license edition of Office 2010-Office Professional Plus 2010 or Office Standard 2010-includes a license for the Office Web Apps. Business customers can then install and run Office Web Apps on SharePoint 2010.

Get Office Web Apps

• For personal use, Office Web Apps are available on SkyDrive, using a free Windows Live ID.
• For business, Office Web Apps can be installed on SharePoint Foundation 2010 or SharePoint Server 2010 on-premises or hosted via Microsoft Online. Business customers licensed for Microsoft Office 2010 through a Volume Licensing program can download Microsoft Office Web Apps from the Volume Licensing Service Center. TechNet subscribers can download Office Web Apps from the TechNet Subscriptions page.

Office Web Apps platform comparison overview article provides a summary comparison of capabilities of Office Web Apps on Windows Live SkyDrive, and of Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Products if they are installed on-premises or on SharePoint Online.

Software prerequisites

To deploy Office Web Apps in your organization requires one of the following SharePoint versions:

• SharePoint Server 2010 Standard edition
• SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise edition
• SharePoint Foundation 2010

Note: Office Web Apps cannot be installed on SharePoint trial editions or SharePoint Server 2010 for Internet Sites edition.

Browsers Supported

Office Web Apps is supported in the following browsers:

• Internet Explorer 7.0
• Internet Explorer 8.0
• Firefox 3. x
• Safari 4. x for the Macintosh
• Google Chrome

Note: Also refer to the Known Issues section in Planning Office Web Apps (Installed on SharePoint 2010 Products) article.

File Types Supported

Office Web Apps save files in the Office 2010 file formats. If you edit files online from versions of Microsoft Office earlier than 2007 for Windows or 2008 for Mac, Office Web Apps saves a copy of your file in the Office 2010 formats and leaves the original unchanged in your SharePoint 2010 library.

Microsoft Word

Microsoft Excel

Microsoft PowerPoint

For more information, please refer to following links

• Microsoft Office Web Apps Product Guide_Final.xps document from the Office 2010: Product Guides page
• Understanding Office Web Apps (Installed on SharePoint 2010 Products)
• Microsoft Support article - Unable to view or edit in Office Web Apps

Office Web Apps deployment

The Microsoft Office Web Apps Deployment page provides links to the tools and resources for IT professionals planning to deploy Office Web Apps in a SharePoint environment.

The Deploy Office Web Apps (Installed on SharePoint 2010 Products) article provides details information for IT Pros planning to deploy Office Web Apps on SharePoint 2010 Products on-premises in their organizations. Also refer to the Understanding Office Web Apps (Installed on SharePoint 2010 Products) and Planning Office Web Apps (Installed on SharePoint 2010 Products) articles available on Microsoft TechNet.

Office Web Apps is tightly integrated with SharePoint 2010 Products. When you install Office Web Apps, the Office Web Apps Services are added to the list of SharePoint Services and the Office Web Apps Feature is added to the available SharePoint Features. Office Web Apps services include the Word Viewing Service, PowerPoint Service, and Excel Calculation Services that are created and run within the context of SharePoint Services. For both stand-alone SharePoint servers and SharePoint server farms, deploying Office Web Apps involves three primary phases:

1. Running setup and PSConfig - Tasks include running Setup.exe and SharePoint Products and Technologies Post Setup and Configuration Wizard (PSConfig) on a stand-alone SharePoint server or each server in a SharePoint server farm. Running Setup.exe installs Office Web Apps files and components on a server. Running PSConfig is required as part of Office Web Apps setup in order to register the Office Web Apps services.
2. Activating the Office Web Apps services - Includes starting the service instances, and creating the service applications and service application proxies.
3. Activating the Office Web Apps Feature - Includes activating the Office Web Apps Feature on all existing SharePoint site collections where the Office Web Apps should be available. The feature will be activated automatically for new site collections created after Office Web Apps is installed. For more information about how to activate the Office Web Apps Feature for a site collection, see Activate the Office Web Apps Feature on site collections.

For the above steps in detail and troubleshooting tips, please refer to the Deploy Office Web Apps (Installed on SharePoint 2010 Products) article.

Note: When installing Office Web Apps in a server farm, it must be installed on every server in that farm. However, the Office Web Apps services do not have to be activated on every server in the farm.

Performance and Capacity Planning

Please refer to the Estimate performance and capacity requirements for Office Web Apps (OfficeWebAppsCapacityPlanningDoc.docx) whitepaper available at Microsoft Download Center. In addition to providing performance and capacity planning information, this whitepaper provides detailed testing information performed by Microsoft, as well as additional recommendations and troubleshooting information. Each Office Web App has slightly different performance characteristics, leading to slightly different capacity characteristics to consider when planning a deployment.

Note: If you will be installing Office Web Apps on an existing SharePoint server farm, it is important to plan for, test, and monitor how Office Web Apps will affect other aspects of your SharePoint server performance.