Raikes talks about Office Live

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Jeff talking to CNet about Office Live. I'm really excited about OfficeLive, particularly for small biz where it really is an amazing deal. You get a lot for FREE or an ad-free version for a modest subscription. Some key points that people have asked me about:

  • Office Live extends Office with additional services and hosted solutions. These run on a hosted WSS infrastructure.
  • It is not Office desktop apps hosted on the internet
  • This is fab for small biz because you can try it out for free first then if you want you can subscribe to remove the ads and if you really like it, you can subscribe to some of the apps that will support your business - try before you buy and buy in small steps
  • Its also fab for small biz because it smooths your cashflow - its a small monthly outgoing not a once ever few years massive spike as you refresh all the PC's. Small businesses need predictable cashflow and so subscription is a brilliant solution for them.

For more on this check here.. to quote:

There are multiple Office Live offerings. 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.

Office Live services initially will be released via an invitation-only beta in the U.S. in early 2006. Small-business customers can sign up at https://www.officelive.com .