Microsoft announced early availability of Office 365 Video earlier today, ticking off an action point for something promised at the SharePoint Conference in March. In essence you get YouTube for the enterprise, powered by both SharePoint Online and Azure Media Services.

Video is one of the most powerful mediums of communication. Office 365 Video provides organizations with a secure, company-wide destination for posting, sharing and discovering video content. From onboarding new employees, to distributing a CEO message company wide, to community contributions, video is now a first-class citizen to power and enrich your internal communications.

With a beautiful user interface and intuitive content management options, Office 365 Video is designed to meet the requirements of IT and win the hearts and minds of users. Powered by Azure Media Services—the same service used during the Olympics (6,000 plus hours of video in 18 days)—Office 365 Video benefits from adaptive smooth streaming technology optimizing video playback for the device it’s being viewed on. It, too, leverages Yammer and the Office Graph to deliver a social, personalized experience within Office 365.

It is available to Office 365 First Release customers now, and will become progressively available over the next couple of months. See the blog post from Microsoft for a sense of what’s coming in future editions of Office 365 Video.