ON MICROSOFT'S "OFFICE LIVE" DEAD ON ARRIVAL?

A THORN BY ANY NAME

Microsoft released it's previously announced "Office Live" as a beta offering today, and the reaction on memorandum is less than resounding.  Office Live is something I posted on back in December, and it's a promising first step. 

As Infoworld reminds us:

"Microsoft introduced its Office Live service last November when it announced its strategy to provide more Web-based services branded under the "Live" moniker. At the time, there were scant details about what Office Live would exactly offer."

Well, now we know, as ZDNet explains:

"With Office Live, Microsoft is offering e-mail, Web domains, Web site hosting and other services for free during the beta...

the most basic package of services will remain free. Microsoft will sell other packages on a subscription basis."

The market opportunity is the small/medium business market, as ZDNet elaborates:

"The company is targeting businesses with fewer than 10 employees. Although nearly nine in 10 such businesses have Web access, only about half have their own Web site, Microsoft says...

"That's a lot of small businesses without a Web site," said Dean Nicolls, senior product manager for Microsoft's information worker services group. In one sign of the demand, Nicolls said, more than 100,000 businesses have signed up for the test. All of those companies are being included in the test of Office Live, while additional companies can sign up on Microsoft's site."

That's a pretty big beta already.

It's a market opportunity that Yahoo! already addresses in part and Google has also been focused on of late as Phil Sim reminds us in this excellent post, titled "The REAL Google Strategy":

"...as I’ve said in numerous posts this month, I think Google get it too. Let’s take a look at what Microsoft is going to offer via Office Live and then see how Google has or will respond.

Office Live Basics: Free e-mail accounts under your domain. Google: Just this past week, went into beta with its own equivalent.

Office Live Basics: Website with a drag and drop design tool. The Valleywag blog revealed that Google was building an Ajax website editor called trogdor. Also said a GMail calendar was on the way, which would bring it up to par with the latest Microsoft Live Mail.

Office Live Basics: Microsoft Office Live Site Reports. Not only do we have Google Analytics, we’ve now got MeasureMap.

Office Live Collaboration: Includes CRM, sales and marketing management, collaboration and project management tools. Google. Nada.

 Yet."

So what are folks upset about?  Well, the most obvious point is the confusing marketing strategy.  Calling a web-hosting services package "Office Live" is confusing given that most people would expect some sort of a web-hosted version of Microsoft Office.  This is why Jupiter analyst Joe Wilcox titles his post "What Office Live is Not".

Greg Linden puts it pretty well:

"Why is it called Office Live then? Taking a strong brand name, Microsoft Office, and adding a modifier to it, the word Live, would lead most people to conclude that Office Live should be some nifty "Live" version of MS Office. It is not."

In other words, if Office Live is not Office Live, what will Microsoft call Office live if/when they roll out the "real" Office live?

And if Office Live is not MSN Live, what will Microsoft do if/when they roll out MSN Live?  I mean MSN is already "Live" by virtue of being an online service, right?

Pretty confusing stuff.  The best description of the service comes in a comment by the always entertaining Christopher Coulter, to a post on the launch by Robert Scoble:

"OfficeLive SAYS hosted Office, you are dead in the water with that marketing. If you even have to pose the question, it’s game over. But what REALLY is OfficeLive?

Just Ray Ozzie playing collaborative tiddlywinks with webby tricks on a ad-sponsored binge-fest, with a small unfocused team, as Microsoft got all uppity Google-spooked."

So in the end, is Microsoft Live is Microsoft's version of Ray Ozzie's Groove Networks fused with it's recent Foldershare acquisition grafted on top off an amalgamation of MSN and Hotmail-derived services?

Wherever the components come from, and however they're branded and marketed, the real answers will unfold as the beta progresses (the blog here) and competes head-on with whatever Google, Yahoo! and other companies bring on.  Fasten your seat-belts.

Comments

[mark slater]

its very confusing as to what it does.

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