Revenue opportunities on Microsoft Office Live with Access 2007

John from the Office Live developer marketing team is launching the Office Live 3rd-party marketplace. This could be an interesting way to sell your custom Access application to a growing community of Office Live subscribers. Here is how John describes the opportunity.

--Clint

Are you looking for ways to expand your Access skills and take advantage of the new SharePoint capabilities of Access 2007? Then you may want to take a closer look at Microsoft Office Live. This set of Internet-based services are built on Windows SharePoint Services and are designed to help a small business develop a Web presence, attract new customers, and manage their organization more effectively. Office Live has also created a 3rd-party marketplace for Microsoft partners who are offering services and solutions built on the platform. This is a great way to get in touch with new customers for your Access applications, and it’s free!

If you don’t yet have an Access application that talks to SharePoint, then this is a great opportunity to test the waters. You can either modify one of your existing applications or take one of the new Access 2007 templates and then tailor it for a specific audience. Change field headings, add columns, add RI, incorporate some logic that you support, and make it more applicable for customers in a specific industry.

The Office Live partner community is just ramping up, but there are already some very cool solutions out there like Solution Canvas in the UK who has developed a practice management system for small legal offices, and Qdabra in the US who offers Qdabra Project Tracker, an InfoPath based solution that streamlines creating estimates and statements of work for all types of consulting projects. The Microsoft Office Live team thinks there is great potential with Access applications and would love to see some Access partners create solutions for Microsoft Office Live over the next 2 months. If you are interested in this opportunity then check out the Microsoft Office Live Developer Portal to learn more about developing on Microsoft Office Live, and visit the Microsoft Office Live Partner page to learn more about the opportunity and the requirements for the marketplace. If you still have questions or want to provide feedback, then please send us an e-mail.