Live.com and Office Live: By George, I think she’s got it

So I closed last nights editorial post asking “Are we really looking at the first signs that MSN is starting to get it? and looking at the broadcast and the screenshots I have to say that I think they have. What you’re about to see is a series of screenshots of Office and Live.com which Microsoft considers their new “application hosting” approach. It is basically bCentral and start.com meshed together with AJAX with the familiar look and feel of the Microsoft Office tools. Except, it is light, fast and web based and they even mention that they are working on Firefox (for those of you not reading between the lines, its not about Firefox support, it is about multi-platform support – they can sell this thing to a Mac user, Linux guru even cell phones — no sync, no software to install – anywhere!) Take a look (click to enlarge) at the screenshots to your right, they are courtesy of neowin.net.

Main Screen

It looks like a pretty complete dashboard starting with the Web Site (site designer, page editor, site statistics even file management), Collaboration (smells like SharePoint to me – business applications, accountant workspace, team website), Business Applications (Customer manager, company calendar, employee directory, project manager, inquiries tracker) and Communications (inbox, calendar, contacts). The most important part of the screSo lets take a look at it (screenshot on the right) — It appears everything a small business needs is at hand here: Web hosting (with built in site designer, page editor, site statistics and fileen is that they also figured out how to (tastefully) include advertising relevant to small business. So not only will they be drawing subscription revenues from this, they will be bringing in the advertising and having yet another way to hit the small business owner with their software – “Web page too restrictive, save a few $$ on Microsoft Money 2006 for Small Business.” This is exactly the kind of a thing that phpGroupWare has been working on for years but never quite hit home with the interface.

Buddy List
They embedded MSN messenger in this, something that has been in beta for quite some time. Again, the appeal here is that you can open this from anywhere and be instantly present for anybody on your buddy list. Would you rather get 10 IM’s all at once or 10 phone calls all at once, with 10 people asking you how you’re doing, whats new and then after wasting a minute or two of your life on politeness they actually get to the beef of what they need? Well, this is designed for a small business, for busy people and reduces the management problem of having to install, manage and upgrade software. Upgrade being the big word here, small business is generally not savvy at managing their software – this is a web page. A rapidly deployable (and infinitely customizeable and changeable) web page that MSN can tweak at any time and not worry about extensive platform testing, distributing the patch, waiting for people to upgrade, handling technical issues. It’s all AJAX, it all runs off their IIS.

So its just a web page? What about a map and a phone?The web page is the interface, but it is not just flat boring HTML. Check out the screenshot to the right, this is the Windows Live Local view, where the person tried to find a restaurant — they got a satellite map of where the restaurant is and and at a click of a mouse they were put into a VoIP session dialing that business. This (although far more elementary) exists in Windows Mobile 5, where you can click on a phone number in a web search and it will automatically dial it. But getting a map, VoIP session and everything at your hands is a big sell.

What else is there?
Well, it looks like its a pretty dynamic on-the-go Office for small business. Saves your RSS feeds, saves your Internet Explorer favourites, integrates a virus scan and computer optimization tools and if it integrated your desktop screen saver it could make for a really portable desktop. I have to admit, I hate hotmail very passionately. But I like this, I want this. It is so simple, so elegant, so.. mobile. I run a hosting business and I don’t see this as a big threat at all, this is a great thing to give to a small business owner who just wants to run his or her business without any complexity. There is such a thing as good enough in small business and I think this gets it.

Now, how does this go up against Google?
Well, it would have to be free. Tough chance of that one happening, especially with accounting and web site hosting — how do you offer free web site hosting with relevant advertising keywords sending that businesses customers to someone else? But a basic subset of this could be free, plastered with advertising ala-Yahoo on every screen, email and IM you write. But to steal a line from my comments section – “They seem to have taken a page out of Google’s book” and in my humble opinion, they made it prettier. It’s simple, its pretty and it makes money. Should Microsoft make it free? Don’t make me quote 2 Live Crew here. This will be the new small business desktop. If it is, why would anybody go to Google to search? Its right there, on every page. Google search is better than MSN Search, but if they come for the applications they won’t go to Google for anything else because you can’t underestimate the convenience.

This looks pretty good, I must say. No wonder Lewis Lin left SBS for this. 😉