The first iteration of Office Live is almost live.
We’ve all been wondering: What is it going to be? An online version of Office?
Robert Scoble has a little blurb and a link to the Office Live blog which has a couple screenshots and a list of product features. I was still a little perplexed, however, until I read Joe Wilcox’s tell-it-like-it-is post on what Office Live will not be and never will be. Now I get it.
I agree with Joe Wilcox’s point about most small businesses (and I mean small in the traditional, mom-and-pop small business sense) not being good candidates for server products, such as SharePoint and Exchange. The administration would be too painful. It looks like Office Live is trying to fill this niche and make the capabilities that these server-based products would provide available to smaller companies that would never install them. Sounds like a good idea–in fact, maybe these services would have been better named “Exchange Live” and “Sharepoint Live.”
Unfortunately, the Web 2.0 folks may be yawning about this time. Actually, I wouldn’t be surprised if many members of the Web 1.0 party aren’t yawning too.
I’m with Richard McManus here, holding out hope that wrapping web interfaces around server products is just a first step on the path to providing much-demanded, browser-based capabilities for the large pool of small businesses–scratch that, for the vast numbers of end users. I don’t think the world simply needs an online Office product, however. I think most people could use a whole lot more than that. Is Office Live a framework for this direction? It doesn’t look like it. But it’s a start. There are so many possibilities here. Tons.
In the meantime we’re going to have to be satisfied describing Office Live in terms of what it is not.