February 20, 2006

Microsoft's Office Live services debut with e-mail, Web hosting services

What, you were expecting Excel via the browser?

The first installment of Microsoft's Office Live initiative landed in beta form last week. No one really thought an AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) version of MS Office was imminent, but it was still slightly disappointing to see that Office Live went little beyond the fee-based e-mail, HTML template, and Web hosting services that a range of vendors have offered before to small businesses.

Make that very small businesses. "Office Live is really aimed at U.S. businesses with less than 10 employees," said Dean Nicolls, senior product manager of information workers services at Microsoft. "Office Live is giving them an all-in-one solution to create an online presence -- from creating a Web site to having company branded e-mail and Web site stats, to having their own shared sites and online business applications so they can keep all their information in one place."

Office Live will be available in three versions, all available in final release by the end of year. Office Live Basics, which includes a Web site, domain name, oodles of templates, Web site analytics, and five e-mail accounts, will be advertising-supported and free of charge to customers. Office Live Collaboration includes 20 business applications for managing customers and employees, whereas Office Live Essentials rolls up the functionality of both plus 50 e-mail accounts. Free during beta, final versions of Collaboration and Essentials will go for a monthly subscription fee starting at $29.95.

According to Matt Rosoff, an analyst at Directions on Microsoft, Office Live will compete with Intuit's QuickBase and stands as an important offering for Microsoft going forward.

"They're putting quite a bit of development effort into [Office Live]," Rosoff said. "I think there will be some powerful tools [in Office Live] even if they're not perfectly baked at the time of the beta. I think it will be a serious initiative in the next couple of years."

Eric Knorr is editor in chief at InfoWorld.

Sign up to receive Applications Resource Alerts

Subscribe to the Technology: Applications Newsletter

The one-stop resource center for IT professionals.

White paper

Turn Your IT Department into a Lean Machine

Like any valuable resource, IT is a terrible thing to waste. But by applying the same lean techniques that have been used to streamline manufacturing processes, IT departments can reduce costs, improve performance and better manage resources.

Download now! »

Podcast

Economy Makes Automation a Must-Have Tech for 2009

Stephen Elliot, vice president of strategy for CA's Infrastructure Management and Data Center Automation business unit, explains why difficult economic times drive the need for simplified management capabilities and advanced automation tools.

Listen now! »

White paper

What You Need to Know About Virtual Infrastructure Management - Now

According to a recent study CA conducted with 300 CIOs and top IT executives, 64 percent of respondents say they've already invested in virtualization, and the other 36 percent reported that they plan to invest in virtualization.

Download now! »

Webcast

Leveraging Virtualization and Process Automation

In this video learn about process automation in a virtualized world. How CA and VMware are enabling enterprise datacenter automation.

View now! »
©1994-2009 Infoworld, Inc.