The new OWA

Office WatchLast updated: 17 July 2018

Microsoft has two products called OWA – which one is which?

Microsoft has two browser-based products with the same acronym.

Anyone who has worked in an organization with Exchange Server will know about ‘Outlook Web Access’ – it’s a way to get to your email from a browser instead of needing Outlook. It’s great for travelling or merely as a backup in case your computer dies.

Outlook Web Access is often called OWA (pronounced ‘Oh-Wah’), including by staff at Microsoft.

There’s also Outlook Mobile Access, a scaled down version of Outlook Web Access for browsers on portable devices. Sometimes called OMA (“Oh-Mah”).

But now we have Office Web Applications also presumably called OWA for short.

We mention this because, at some stage, there’s going to be a reference somewhere to ‘OWA’ and it won’t be clear which browser enabled technology is being referred to.

That’s one reason why, for the moment, we’ll use the full, “Office Web Applications” name.