LiveSide - News blog : Office Live Small Business

Office In The Cloud

Sunshine — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 11:45:22 GMT

In all this excitement of PDC, cloud computing (Azure) and Live Mesh updates, there is one piece of cloud related news we haven’t told you about.

Microsoft Office will also be moving towards the cloud! We already know about the web storage of Office documents through Office Live Workspace (save, access, and share) but that is going to be expanded with lightweight versions of Microsoft Office Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. Powered by AJAX and/or Silverlight, they will be available for use in standard Web browsers such ad Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari. Imagine being able to edit your Office document from your PC, Mobile Phone and the Web!

Click on the thumbnails for larger images

All this will be offered through Office Live, a consumer service with both ad-funded and subscription offerings. For business customers, Office Web applications will be offered as a hosted subscription service and through existing volume licensing agreements. Later on this will also be offered as a part of the Office Suites (Office 14). There will be a private technology preview of the Office Web applications later this year. If you are interested in this, sign up for Office Live Workspace. Of course we’ll keep you updated on this too!

For a first look video, head over to Channel 9.

PressPass - Microsoft to Extend Office to the Browser
Workspace Team Blog - Microsoft extends Office to the browser via Office Live

Office Live Small Business reaches 1 million subscribers

Kip Kniskern — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 00:08:38 GMT

Office Live Small Business, the beta for small businesses to establish an online presence with a free website, domain name, and 100 email addresses, has reached 1 million subscribers, according to a Microsoft press release. Currently up and running in 5 languages/locales (US, UK, France, Germany, Japan), Office Live Small Business provides basic services for free, and offers upgraded services (more space/storage, Store Manager to sell products directly from your site or from eBay, email marketing tools, as well as a free adManager tool to manage ads set up through Microsoft’s adCenter) on a subscription basis. Office Live Small Business also sets you up with an Office Live Workspace account, to collaborate on documents and files, using Microsoft Office products or a web interface.

You can sign up for Office Live Small Business (if you’re in one of the 5 locales) for free.

Office Live announces V2: no premium tiers; e-commerce

Kip Kniskern — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 11:34:00 GMT

Microsoft has just announced its version 2 of Office Live Small Business (and no, Henry Blodget, its not an online version of Office), the website management suite of tools for building and managing a small business online presence. According to tonight's press release, via IDC, "about half of the small businesses in the United States with fewer than 10 employees do not have a Web site". Office Live, first revealed here on LiveSide almost exactly two years ago, now boasts almost 600,000 customers worldwide, in the US, UK, France, Germany, and Japan.

The new version includes a number of new features and changes, most notably that the tier structure of Office Live Small Business is being done away with. Previously, customers had to choose between Basics, Essentials, and Premium. In the new version, the model moves to a basic free account with add-ons. What's new in Office Live Small Business? The short list includes Firefox support, a new pricing structure, Workspaces included at no cost for all users, a free year of custom domain and 100 business email accounts with 5gb of storage each, and a new e-commerce section that enables online sales and management from the customer's Office Live website, or from eBay.

Here's a more complete list:

Free and even easier to get started.
- Customer no longer need to choose a domain name or enter a credit card number to open an account.
- Once a customer is signed up, everything needed to establish a professional Web presence is provided for free, including Web hosting and an easy-to-use Web site building tool, as well as a custom domain name with 100 business-branded e-mail accounts (a custom domain and business e-mail is free for the first year, $14.95 annually thereafter).
- In addition, customers receive several useful business applications previously available only for a monthly fee, including Project Manager, Document Manager and Contact Manager, free at sign-up.
Store Manager ($39.95 per month). This hosted e-commerce tool enables customers to sell products on their Office Live Small Business Web site and on eBay.
E-mail Marketing beta (200 e-mails per month/free during beta). The feature makes it possible to connect to customers by sending newsletters, promotions and updates within attractive e-mails that match the look and feel of the Web site.
adManager (pay-per-click pricing). Now out of beta, this keyword advertising feature has been enhanced with a new bid recommendation engine and additional distribution through the Ask Sponsored Listings network.
Unified Analytics. A new tool called Analytics provides reports for Store Manager, adManager, E-mail Marketing beta and Web site traffic, integrated in one central reporting experience.
Workspaces. Now included at no cost to all users, Workspaces is simpler to use, with new sidebars that make it easier to see user permissions, add new users to a workspace and share data.
Advanced Web site design tools. It’s now even easier to get a professional Web site up and running. Office Live Small Business templates now offer more customization options, allowing customers to directly edit the code or import code from another site. In addition, customers now have the freedom to use any Web site design tool they choose to build their site.
Firefox support. Tools and features are now compatible with the Firefox 2.0 Web browser, even on Macs.
Private domain name registration. All custom domains now automatically receive private domain name registration, to help customers better protect their contact information from spammers and phishers.
Premium e-mail ($19.95 per year). Customers can upgrade their 100 ad-supported free e-mail accounts to ad-free accounts.

Office Live Small Business is available at http://smallbusiness.officelive.com

Office Live announces improvements across the board

Kip Kniskern — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 13:16:22 GMT

The Office Live team has just announced an number of improvements coming soon to all three flavors of Office Live: Basic, Essentials, and Premium. "The upgrade process began January 5th and will last four to six weeks", according to the announcement. Here are the improvements for Office Live Basics, as listed on the Office Live Small Business site on Microsoft.com:

Office Live Basics

Here’s how we’re improving your service:

Web site design and management

Site Designer tool is now easier to use

Customize the look of your site even more by replacing template header with your own custom header

Easily add a blog to your Web site with the new integration with Windows Live Spaces Blogs

Slideshow creation is now easier than ever and you can now add captions to your images

For our advanced users and professional Web designers, a new advanced mode adds more flexibility in design and layout, You’ll now have the ability to:

Customize header, footer, and navigation on a page-by-page basis

Import or edit custom XSLT code

Use custom HTML and third-party design tools

E-mail accounts

All customers can now take advantage of full synchronization with Outlook 2007 for e-mail, personal contacts, calendar, and tasks

Mail storage capacity expanded to 5GB per user e-mail account

Reporting

The reporting system is completely redesigned and enhanced

With new adManager integration, you can monitor search advertising efforts with live.com and ask.com, along with your Web site traffic

Analyze performance of all your sales and marketing campaigns in a single place

Track Web site conversion points, click-through, and page views for each marketing campaign

Note The reporting system will experience a service interruption when the application is upgraded

There are changes coming to Essentials and Premium as well, check them out on the site.

SEM Services Being Added to Office Live

ScottIsAFool — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 05:42:55 GMT

SearchEngineWatch is reporting today that Office Live is to get a SEM offering to the services in its Office Live Small Business market. So what is SEM? It's Search Engine Marketing and basically it means getting your website higher up the search ranks in a search engine's results. The service will be in conjunction with The Search Agency.

"The needs of entrepreneurs in this space are very diverse. Some are do-it-yourself oriented, and want to learn to do everything, while others want to completely offload certain aspects of their business to vendors," said Louise Rasho, senior manager of marketing communications for Microsoft Office Live Small Business. "Then there are the folks in the middle, who need consultative help getting started, so they can take over from there."

This move adds to the services Microsoft already provide in the form of the adManager service and a service they offer to website pros, so Microsoft certainly seems to be making a big push to help those who are using the Office Live service to promote themselves and get their site and/or business noticed by the masses.