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Microsoft opens Office Live test site for UK users

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22nd Mar 2007
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After a year-long wait, Microsoft Office Live has opened a beta test site for UK users, offering business users a free internet domain and Hotmail email account, with rudimentary online business applications to follow in a package that will cost £22.95 a month. John Stokdyk reports.

The worldwide rollout of Office Live has now extended to France, Germany and Japan as well as the UK. A quick 20-minute trial run shows it to be an intuitive, if unexciting business equivalent to MySpace, with a Hotmail account thrown in for good measure. While it looks better and feels more robust than News Corporation's music and teen-oriented online community, it lacks some important features - most notably a blogging engine.

For the moment, the online applications and shared workspaces are inoperative, but this is where Microsoft Office Live holds most promise. These will include a Business Contact Manager, Time Manager, Project Manager and Company Administrator which will include modules for employee records, an asset register and expenses system. For the moment, there is no sign of an online version of Office Online Accounting Express, which is offered to Microsoft Office Live users in the US.

Although Microsoft Office Live Basics is being offered as a free beta test service, the sign up process requires the user to submit credit card details. The purpose of this is to ensure that every customer is a legitimate entity, the company said. To prevent Office Live sites being used for "phishing" scams or spamming, each credit card number will be limited to one Office Live account.

In another announcement that will interest desktop Microsoft Office users, the company has released a set of add-ins to connect Office applications to Microsoft's Live Meeting environment. Available as a free download, the Live Meeting Add-In Pack has connectors for Outlook, MSN Messenger and an Office Collaboration Add-In that will let users set up an online collaboration meeting from within Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Visio or Project. Although Live Meeting sounds like it might be part of the Office Live environment, it is a separate system based around the PlaceWare online meeting tools that Microsoft acquired in 2002.

Mark Deakin, unified communications product manager at Microsoft said the add-ins were part of a bigger suite of communication tools designed to take some of the practical complexities out of collaborative online working.

"Usually, if you want to run an online meeting, you would have to send an invitation, or a link to a Live Meeting website, along with a user ID, password and so on," said Deakin.

"Rather than having to open a separate browser session, what we've done with the Office Connector Add-In is put that functionality within the Office application you're in. You can be looking through some sales figures in Excel and if you notice a dip, you can click on a button and escalate the conversation into a Live Meeting where you can share the spreadsheet will colleagues."

The meeting tools include the ability to pass control of the spreadsheet to other users. "If you've got a big 20Mb spreadsheet, you probably don't want to send it around by email. The Office Connector lets you work on it together, even if you're in different countries," said Deakin.

"As long as you have a net connection, you can go through the document with multiple people - and there's no need to swap IP addresses. It's all handled by the add-in."

Less than two months ago, I wrote in an IT zone prediction story that 2007 was unlikely to be "the year software as a service takes off". That view may well have to change. The arrival of Microsoft Office Live, plus competing offers from the likes of Google Apps and Zoho are reducing the technology and cost thresholds for businesses to consolidate their admin around online systems.

Accountants in practice are likely to be caught up by any mass migration of SMEs to software as a service. Generic business application sites like Microsoft Live and Google Apps can handle business contacts and email, but as yet they have not extended to handling companies' books, payroll, tax computations and statutory filing.

Bookkeeping software as a service providers such as Twinfield, Winweb and Liberty Accounts - not to mention Sage 50 Online and IRIS Accounts Office Online - are assiduously courting practitioners as recruiters for their online offerings.

At the moment, the big guns are trying to corral users into their online territories. But as the evangelists tell us, the software as a service philosophy is about avoiding "lock-in" and finding business applications that can interoperate via simple programming links and data exchange. This technology shift is going to be a very long, drawn out poker game, with the jackpot going to providers and integrators who can assemble the bits and pieces into coherent, user-focused business suites.

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