Microsoft announces Web-based Office Live
According to Microsoft, the new Office Live service, announced last night will, “provide small businesses with an affordable set of Internet-based business services hosted by Microsoft to help them establish, manage and grow their business through a professional digital identity as well as collaboration and business management tools that traditionally have required dedicated server and IT resources to operate.”
Breathless it may be, but what will it really offer small businesses that’s not already out there, or that they haven’t already got installed?
The official Factsheet offers some guidance :
Key Features. Office Live offers Internet services for running a growing business:
• Microsoft Office Live Basics. This advertising-supported, free-to-customer offer provides small businesses the basics required for establishing a digital identity, including company domain name, a hosted Web site with 30 megabytes of storage, five e-mail accounts with their own domain names, a WYSIWYG Web designer for quickly designing a Web site and Web analytics to analyze the resulting traffic.
• Microsoft Office Live Essentials. Microsoft Office Live Essentials will provide customers what they need to establish and manage a small business; company domain name, Web site space, 50 e-mail accounts with their own domain names, WYSIWYG Web designer to design a Web site, FrontPage support for advanced Web design, advanced Web analytics to analyze the resulting traffic, and a range of hosted small business applications to automate daily business tasks such as customer management, project management and document management. These hosted services can work on their own or enhance the experience of customers using the Microsoft Office programs, servers and services, such as Microsoft Office Live Meeting and Microsoft Office Small Business Edition.
• Microsoft Office Live Collaboration. This offering will provide a range of hosted, cost-effective business management tools that are affordably managed and maintained by Microsoft. Capabilities include customer management, project management, document management and a private Web site for collaborating among employees as well as externally with customers, suppliers and contractors. Office Live is designed to provide a complete, affordable and easy-to-use solution that can be used alone via the Web or with popular Microsoft Office programs.
Benefits for Small Businesses :
Microsoft Office Live will benefit small businesses by addressing their most pressing needs to grow new customers, retain existing ones and keep ahead of the competition:
• Free professional Web site with the company’s own domain name and free e-mail accounts expertly hosted by Microsoft
• A private, online work space for organizing and managing customer and business information
• A complete set of tools and small-business management applications for managing time, tasks, projects and company data that integrate with existing Microsoft Office programs
• The company’s own work space to collaborate with employees, customers, partners, suppliers and contractors
• An extensible platform for solutions customized for the business delivered by Microsoft Certified Partners.
Only time will tell whether this hastily-assembled service will add value to the small business domain. We await the verdict with interest.
Update: Dave Winer has some typically trenchant comments on his Scripting News blog : “the Live stuff is an immature version of my.yahoo.com, with a very nice small business hosting site (that’s all that Office Live appears to be).”
Update: Mary Jo Foley’s take on Office Live at Microsoft Watch : “Office Live is not a hosted version of Office. We’re not entirely sure what it is, given that it isn’t set to go to beta until early 2006. Based on a preliminary description, it sounds like it is a bunch of services like those currently offered on the Microsoft small-business center (the former bCentral) site.”
