* Who is Office Live aimed at?
I want to look at Office Live, announced last week by Microsoft, one more time before moving on. Windows Live we can dismiss from our consideration as it has no place in the business network. Even Microsoft admits that by describing the new brand as “…a set of personal Internet services.” Windows Live is for the Windows ME and the Windows XP Home crowd.
Office Live, on the other hand, is targeted at the business market. Microsoft called it “a new set of Internet-based services for growing and managing a business online.” However if you think this is a new paradigm for Fortune 50 companies to incorporate into their enterprise management scheme then you’re sadly mistaken.
We’ve covered Microsoft’s segmentation of the business market in a number of issues recently. First, there was the Windows Small Business for those organizations with 50 or fewer PCs on their network (see “Microsoft unveils plans for Windows Small Business Server”). Then came the announcement of “Centro” aimed at organizations with between 25 and 500 clients (see “Microsoft Centro: Is it right for you?”). Office Live is targeted at a different segment of the market – those with fewer than 10 employees.
The press release for Office Live seems to be describing a combination of ISP services with the functionality of Salesforce.com:
“Office Live Basics helps a small business establish an online Internet presence including a domain name, a Web site with 30 MB of storage and five Web e-mail accounts at no charge through an advertising-supported model. Office Live also provides a set of subscription-based services with more than 20 business applications to help automate daily business tasks such as project management, sales and collateral management, customer management, expense reports, time and billing management, and secure internal and external collaboration. Built on Windows SharePoint Services, these applications can be customized and extended to specific customer needs by an extensive Microsoft partner ecosystem.”
There may be a market for these services, but I certainly don’t see a demand. Perhaps my friend Jim Gaskin, over in the Small Business Technology newsletter is aware of one.
