Microsoft has a new secret weapon in its war on Google: 'Dogfooding'

Office 365 PowerPoint Dog

(Microsoft)Office 365 PowerPoint Dog

The cliche "eat your own dogfood" has become so baked into Silicon Valley's culture that there's a one-word term for it: "dogfooding."

Simply put, it means using the tech you make and/or sell.

And that's Microsoft's latest plan to get the world using Office 365, its online version of Microsoft Office and its competitor to Google Apps.

On Wednesday, Microsoft rolled out a new plan that encourages its massive network of resellers to move their own businesses to Office 365. Microsoft struck up an agreement with a company called SkyKick that lets Microsoft's biggest partners use SkyKick's transfer tool, Office 365 Migration Suite, for free.

Microsoft partners get to use the Microsoft products they sell for free, including Office 365. But it's no small task to transfer people's saved messages, their folders and files, user settings, contacts and so on. SkyKick says that it can take a week to transfer even a small company with 25 employees from regular offline Office to Office 365.

Meanwhile, resellers that use Office 365 themselves are "three times more successful at selling it,” said Gavriella Schuster, general manager of Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Group.

As we previously reported, Google has a plan to grab 80% of Microsoft's Office customers away from Microsoft and onto Google Apps. Apps is already hugely successful with small and medium companies.

But Microsoft is fighting back tooth and nail.

And it looks like it's working. Office 365 usage is growing like crazy, industry experts say.

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