Office Live to join Windows Live

Yesterday Mary Jo Foley reported that Office Live will be joining Windows Live in Wave 4, at least in terms of how the products are presented to consumers, and today a post on the OfficeLiveWorkSpaceCommunity blog further confirms it.  Office Live will remain a part of the Business division, according to confirmation received by Mary Jo yesterday:

Rajesh (Rajesh Jah, Corp VP for Office Live and Exchange) will not be leaving the Microsoft Business Division.  There are no changes to the org structure. Rajesh’s title remains corporate VP, Microsoft Office Live and Exchange.

However Office Live and Windows Live will “converge” into a single set of services.  From the blog post:

Today, I wanted to share with you some exciting news about Office Live: To simplify and improve the customer experience around our Live services, we’ve made the decision to converge Windows Live and Office Live into an integrated set of services at one single destination. We think that just makes a ton of sense and goes a long way toward giving you a simpler, richer, better service that allows you to do more with one account.

Of course this is not entirely unexpected news, as we have seen some hooks into Office Live from Windows Live already, still it’s good to hear that the consolidation of services that had been spread all over the Windows Live map is continuing.

Comments

  • http://www.liveside.net/members/BV2312/default.aspx BV2312

    Wouldn’t it be nice to view a word doc on the net from WL Hotmail, make changes using Office Live and resend the mail back…. or even preview doc/xls/pdfs etc

  • http://www.liveside.net/members/joeale/default.aspx joeale

    Windows Live in Wave 4 what eles is part of Windows Live in Wave 4.And now that office is part windows live wave 4.Is windows live wave 4 going start when windows 7 hit the retail stores.

  • http://www.liveside.net/members/dneimke/default.aspx dneimke

    >> Of course this is not entirely unexpected news

    Really? You expected this?

    >> as we have seen some hooks into Office Live from
    >> Windows Live already

    Such as?

    >> it’s good to hear that the consolidation of services that had
    >> been spread all over the Windows Live map is continuing.

    We’ll see. I’m all for some consolidation, but only where it makes sense. I see nothing in this that makes sense.

  • http://www.liveside.net/members/Sunshine/default.aspx Sunshine

    dneimke: If you have Microsoft Office installed you are already offered the Office Live Add-in when you install Windows Live Essentials. And if you have a version of that with Office Outlook you are offered the Microsoft Office Outlook connector too.

  • JohnCz

    Hopefully this will not disrupt any of the website or sharepoint functionality currently offered in OLSB. If this means we will have a more seamless UI experience, easier to switch between Windows Live and Office Live Small Business then I’m all for it.

    No doubt they will also be looking to consolidate their various storage/sharing solutions for Live SkyDrive, Live Sync, Live Mesh and Office Live Workspace.