Office Live Offers Alternative for SMBs Web-based Beta Version of Office Now Available Susan Kuchinskas
With Wednesday's launch of Microsoft's Office Live, the ubiquitous office suite has joined Windows Live as part of Redmond's foray into Web-based applications. The new hosted Office packages are designed for small businesses with 10 or fewer employees that lack in-house IT staff.
While hosted applications aimed at small businesses are nothing new — companies such as Salesforce.com, NetSuite, WebEx and a host of others have touted the advantages of software-as-a-service (SaaS) for years — this is Microsoft's biggest push. (Although it has offered hosting and Web-based services previously through it Small Business Center, formerly known as bCentral).
Microsoft claims the target audience for the Web-based software is small businesses because these businesses have asked for more hosted applications. Microsoft's competitors, on the other hand, claim it's targeting small business because the software giant doesn't want to jeopardize the server and license revenue it receives from larger enterprises for Office applications.
Whatever the motivation, you can test Office Live for yourself starting today. The software service will be available in three virtual packages, according to a statement on Microsoft's Small Business Center Web site:
Microsoft Office Live Basics is a collection of free, ad-supported services that includes a company domain name, five e-mail accounts under that domain with 2 GB of storage each, a Web site with 30 MB of file storage space, drag-and-drop design tools for creating the Web site, and the Microsoft Office Live Site Reports tool for monitoring and analyzing Web site traffic.
Microsoft Office Live Collaboration is designed for small businesses that may already have a Web site. It offers Internet-based business management tools based on Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services technology. Capabilities include customer management, project management, sales and marketing management, employee management, and company administration, as well as password-protected internal shared sites to facilitate collaboration among employees, customers, suppliers and other business partners.
Microsoft Office Live Essentials includes a free domain name, 50 e-mail accounts, a Web site with 50 MB of file storage space; the Web design tool plus Microsoft FrontPage support for advanced Web design, more advanced Web site analytics, and a set of Internet-based applications for managing customers, projects and documents.
The three packages are designed to work independently and to integrate with other programs in the Microsoft Office suite.
During the beta period, the three packages will be free. The final public versions of all three services are expected to launch in late 2006. According to the blog LiveSide, the Collaboration and Essentials packages will start at $29.95 per month after the official launch.
"With Microsoft Office Live, we are making online services available for small businesses to create an enterprise-like IT infrastructure for them without the management requirements," said Jeff Raikes, president of the Microsoft Business Division, in a statement.
Office Live Essentials will be competing with Yahoo Small Business, which recently cut its prices. Yahoo (Quote, Chart) is offering a domain name, 200 e-mail accounts, Web design tools and Web hosting with 5 GB of storage for $8.96 a month.
Last week, Google (Quote, Chart) also began testing a version of its Gmail service that provides organizations with e-mail accounts using their own domain names. Google hasn't announced any forays into the hosted applications arena, but a partnership with Sun Microsystems that includes working together to promote the open source OpenOffice suite of alternatives to Microsoft Office has some wondering whether Google plans to get further into Microsoft's face.
Story adapted from internetnews.com. Dan Muse contributed to this story. February 15, 2006
