Microsoft on Tuesday unveiled Office 365, a solution that integrates Microsoft Office, SharePoint Online, Exchange Online, and Lync Online in an always up-to-date cloud service.

Office 365 is being targeted to Microsoft’s sweet spot market; the SMB. In particular, to small businesses that may not have the resources (or interest) in maintaining on-premise Exchange and SharePoint environments. Microsoft’s banking on the attraction of not having to keep up with mundane, time-sucking tasks like server patching and updating as well as on what its touting as “Agile IT” -24-7 support from engineers in the cloud.

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“Who better to support Exchange Server, than Microsoft?” Microsoft said during the webcast of today’s announcement.

Office 365 will be available in two editions; for small businesses and for enterprises. Office 365 for small business is targeted to organizations with fewer than 25 employees and delivers Office Web Apps, Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Lync Online plus an external Web site to subscribers. Cost will be $6 per user, per month.

Office 365 for enterprises includes the option to get Microsoft Office Professional Plus desktop software on a pay-as-you-go basis. Additional features include e-mail, voicemail, enterprise social networking, instant messaging, Web portals, extranets, voice and video conferencing, webconferencing and 24-7 support. Prices range from $2 to $24 per user, per month, although volume pricing will also be available, said per Chris Capossela, senior vice president in the Microsoft Office Division.

The push to deliver comprehensive cloud services is quite a leap from the rather limited Office Web Apps and Office Live offerings. Microsoft is going whole hog here and the comparisons to Google Apps Premier and other Google services will be inevitable. Even Microsoft seemed to take a thinly veiled jab at Google today. Kurt DelBene, president of the Microsoft Office Division, said “there is no learning curve” with Office 365 because it’s the “same Microsoft Office we all know and love,” obviously referring to how extensive a presence Microsoft Office has in corporate culture.

And he may be right. Microsoft is taking its most successful and most widely used offerings: Office, Exchange, and SharePoint to the cloud and turning what has always been a license-based sales model to a subscription-based one. It’s in tune with the times and yes, business customers will flock to it simply because its software with which they are familiar, no matter if it resides locally or in the cloud.

Office 365 can be serious competition for Google, provided a few givens. One, that the user experience Office 365 delivers is a rich and high-fidelity one. It can’t be “Office/Exchange/SharePoint Light”; it’s got to have the robustness of the on-prem versions of those products and it can’t be a solution that still requires users to be tethered to a desktop edition of Office for full functionality. Second, availability and support is a must. That means little to no downtimes and technicians that are available 24-7 are all part of the monthly subscriptions. Microsoft’s technical support is notoriously expensive outside of the support time that comes with purchase of a new product.

Office 365 will be available globally, next year. Beginning today, Microsoft will begin beta testing with a few thousand organizations worldwide. On the roadmap is availability in 40 countries and regions next year, integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM online, and a third edition, Office 365 for education.