Office Live Workspace
Microsoft announced a new hosted-software service called Office Live Workspace. It's currently in beta (you can preregister for the beta HERE).
Office Live Workspace provides users with a web-based workspace to share and collaborate on documents created with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc. Think of it as SharePoint Lite. They will provide you with 250MB of storage space.
Office Live Workspace is not the equivalent to Google Docs (which provides web-based word processing, spreadsheets, and file storage). Office Live Workspace is simply an extension of the Microsoft Office Suite (i.e., the applications that are installed on your computer).
It'll be interesting to see how it will be delivered. Since Office Live Workspace doesn't have web-based apps, it protects Microsoft's existing installed desktop base. But with Google Docs and other web-based apps becoming available, it's just a matter of time before you will be purchasing a subscription to Microsoft Office and accessing your favorite word processor or spreadsheet over the Internet.
I'm more interested in the true SharePoint functionality: contacts, calendars, tasks, custom lists, etc. I could see a huge market opening up for households using SharePoint sites to coordinate kid's schedules (sports, dance, swim lessons), contact lists (family phone numbers, plumber, doctors, etc.), and tasks (honey-do lists?). Doc storage is one thing, but give a family the ability to communicate more effectively in this busy world (from work, school, home, while traveling) and you will see a new market grow.
I have some problems with both web-based storage and web-based applications though. 1st, why would I ever store sensitive documents (like contracts) on Google or Microsoft's servers? I definitely don't trust Google when it comes to privacy and I'm not so sure I would trust Microsoft either. 2nd, what would I do in the event of an Internet outage? Not only would I lose access to my docs, but I wouldn't be able to work on anything else either...
Interesting stuff that I'll be writing about in future posts.
Office Live Workspace provides users with a web-based workspace to share and collaborate on documents created with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc. Think of it as SharePoint Lite. They will provide you with 250MB of storage space.
Office Live Workspace is not the equivalent to Google Docs (which provides web-based word processing, spreadsheets, and file storage). Office Live Workspace is simply an extension of the Microsoft Office Suite (i.e., the applications that are installed on your computer).
It'll be interesting to see how it will be delivered. Since Office Live Workspace doesn't have web-based apps, it protects Microsoft's existing installed desktop base. But with Google Docs and other web-based apps becoming available, it's just a matter of time before you will be purchasing a subscription to Microsoft Office and accessing your favorite word processor or spreadsheet over the Internet.
I'm more interested in the true SharePoint functionality: contacts, calendars, tasks, custom lists, etc. I could see a huge market opening up for households using SharePoint sites to coordinate kid's schedules (sports, dance, swim lessons), contact lists (family phone numbers, plumber, doctors, etc.), and tasks (honey-do lists?). Doc storage is one thing, but give a family the ability to communicate more effectively in this busy world (from work, school, home, while traveling) and you will see a new market grow.
I have some problems with both web-based storage and web-based applications though. 1st, why would I ever store sensitive documents (like contracts) on Google or Microsoft's servers? I definitely don't trust Google when it comes to privacy and I'm not so sure I would trust Microsoft either. 2nd, what would I do in the event of an Internet outage? Not only would I lose access to my docs, but I wouldn't be able to work on anything else either...
Interesting stuff that I'll be writing about in future posts.
Labels: Office, SharePoint
posted by Neall at
8:20 PM
0 Comments
