Office Live Workspace beta launched

MICROSOFT has started the roll out of its first public beta of its Office Live Workspace product, a kind of hybrid software-plus-services that lets users more easily collaborate across the internet.

Office Live Workspace is a secure online workspace that Microsoft Office users can share Word, PowerPoint, Excel or PDF files – working remotely from virtually any web-connected PC and collaborate on with others.

The services initially gives users 500Mb of storage, and is limited to users in the US, though it is scheduled for roll-out internationally in 2008.

The Office Live Workspace is Microsoft’s hybrid answer to the Google Doc & Spreadsheets service

Microsoft Office director of consumer and small business product management Kirk Gregersen said the product helped solve collaboration challenges by giving everyone in a workgroup access to the same version of a document.

“This is just the start of a wave of new products we’re rolling out to deliver on our vision of software plus services, bringing together the features and performance of software with the convenience and reach of services delivered over the internet,” Mr Gregersen said.

“We think that Office Live Workspace will be important for our 500 million Office customers because it’s one of the first tightly integrated web-based sharing and collaboration services designed to give a seamless experience for Office users,” he said.

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Hotmail pioneer embraces SaaS office

THE internet pioneer who founded and built the Hotmail service before selling it to Microsoft has launched a suite of online personal productivity products that will compete with the powerful MS Office franchise.

The Live Documents service was launched last week by Bangalore-based Instant Collaboration Software Technologies (InstaColl), a start-up founded by Sabeer Bhatia – a co-founder of the phenomenally successful Hotmail services.

Mr Bhatia rose to international prominence in the industry when in 1997 he sold Hotmail to Microsoft for US$400 million.

Live Documents is a full-featured suite of online Office productivity applications offering functionality equivalent to Word, Excel and PowerPoint that can be used through any computer with a browser.

The Live Documents service also allows online collaboration and sharing of documents. The hybrid online-offline service lets users work on documents offline on any PC that runs Flash software, regardless of the operating system.

“Live Documents offers a unique perspective on Office productivity and collaboration that merges the best of two worlds - the richness and familiarity of desktop software with the collaborative capabilities of the web,” InstaColl chairman Sabeer Bhatia.

“It provides a reliable bridge between the online and offline worlds that consumers and businesses can count on, he said.”

“Live Documents is the new productivity suite for the internet generation providing flexibility lacking in traditional software while retaining that which is important from the past and extending it with unique collaborative capabilities.

“I believe that Live Documents does for documents what Hotmail did for e-mail,” Mr Bhatia said.

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Adobe acquires Buzzword SaaS developer

DOCUMENT specialist Adobe Systems has signed a definitive agreement to acquire tiny SaaS start-up Virtual Ubiquity, developers of the online word processor Buzzword.

Buzzword was built using Adobe’s Flex software and runs in the Adobe Flash Player and lets more than one user to view and edit as document online at the same time.

Separately, Adobe also added a new file sharing service to its current online document services codenamed “Share”. The beta service is designed to make it easier for people to share, publish and organise documents online.

The company said the acquisition was part of its commitment to “foster a vibrant ecosystem” for rich internet application (RIA) development.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, though Virtual Ubiquity’s eleven California-based staff will join Adobe.

The acquisition helps establish Adobe as a player in the Software as a Service (SaaS) market, which is fast becoming one of the hottest sectors of the industry on the back of offerings like Google’s Docs & Spreadsheets offering.

“For over a decade, Adobe Acrobat software and PDF have been the standard way people share and collaborate on high value documents across platforms, with perfect fidelity,” said Adobe Business Productivity Business Unit senior vice-president David Mendels.

“Buzzword will build on that leadership and enable fundamental improvements in how people collaborate on documents,” he said.

“At the same time, it is an exciting showcase of the power of Adobe’s RIA technology that raises the bar for the quality of experience people should expect in their applications.”

Adobe said Buzzword enables greater document quality, outstanding typography, page layout controls, and robust support for integrated graphics, regardless of the browser or device. The application also runs on Adobe AIR, giving users a hybrid online/offline experience and the ability to work with both hosted and local documents.

Virtual Ubiquity chief executive Rick Treitman said Buzzword was “an online word processor for the ‘Facebook generation’ that focuses on working together online, without sacrificing quality.”

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Microsoft moves Office toward SaaS

MICROSOFT has moved to counter the threat from Google to its Office franchise, moving the first elements of the productivity software using the software as a service (SaaS) model.

The company has laid out new plans for its online services that combine elements of client-based programs with software that runs large servers and new services delivered over the internet.

The new strategy represents a radical first step in overhauling the Microsoft business, and is seen as a direct response to the growing threat of Google’s Docs and Spreadsheets SaaS offerings.

The new Microsoft Office Live Workspace is a Web component of its Microsoft Office desktop productivity software suite that lets user store, share and comment on documents, but its stops short of letting users create new documents through the internet.

The Microsoft Office Live Workspace is not yet ‘live’, though from this week users are ale to sign up as beta users of the new service.

The site gives users 250Mb of storage space, and the site can be used to email friends or colleagues inviting them to read and comment on documents. But to make editing changes, the users must still have a registered and installed copy of the Office package.

Microsoft will deliver a variety of new solutions during the coming months under two key families of service offerings: “Live” and “Online.”

“Live” services from Microsoft are designed primarily for individuals, business end-users and virtual work groups. Live offerings span entertainment, communication and productivity. These services emphasise ease of use, simplicity of access and flexibility, and are ideally suited for situations where people either don’t have access to professional technical expertise or don’t require high levels of system management.

“Online” services are for organisations with more advanced IT needs where power and flexibility are critical.

Online services from Microsoft give businesses the ability to control access to data, manage users, apply business and compliance policy, and meet high availability standards while providing performance, scalability, enhanced security, management features and service-level capabilities to support mission-critical applications and systems.

Microsoft is providing business customers with the flexibility to choose between traditional on-premise implementations, services hosted by Microsoft partners and now Online services that reside in Microsoft’s data centres

“This new era of connected computing is about empowering people and businesses to balance the power of the Internet with the rich interactivity and high performance of client and server software,” said Microsoft Business Division president Jeff Raikes.

“With today’s announcements, we are taking a significant step forward by combining our deep client and server software experience with our strong commitment to delivering flexible services offerings for our wide variety of customers and their unique needs.”

For more Web Applications news, click here.

Microsoft moves Office toward SaaS

MICROSOFT has moved to counter the threat from Google to its Office franchise, moving the first elements of the productivity software using the software as a service (SaaS) model.

The company has laid out new plans for its online services that combine elements of client-based programs with software that runs large servers and new services delivered over the internet.

The new strategy represents a radical first step in overhauling the Microsoft business, and is seen as a direct response to the growing threat of Google’s Docs and Spreadsheets SaaS offerings.

The new Microsoft Office Live Workspace is a Web component of its Microsoft Office desktop productivity software suite that lets user store, share and comment on documents, but its stops short of letting users create new documents through the internet.

The Microsoft Office Live Workspace is not yet ‘live’, though from this week users are ale to sign up as beta users of the new service.

The site gives users 250Mb of storage space, and the site can be used to email friends or colleagues inviting them to read and comment on documents. But to make editing changes, the users must still have a registered and installed copy of the Office package.

Microsoft will deliver a variety of new solutions during the coming months under two key families of service offerings: “Live” and “Online.”

“Live” services from Microsoft are designed primarily for individuals, business end-users and virtual work groups. Live offerings span entertainment, communication and productivity. These services emphasise ease of use, simplicity of access and flexibility, and are ideally suited for situations where people either don’t have access to professional technical expertise or don’t require high levels of system management.

“Online” services are for organisations with more advanced IT needs where power and flexibility are critical.

Online services from Microsoft give businesses the ability to control access to data, manage users, apply business and compliance policy, and meet high availability standards while providing performance, scalability, enhanced security, management features and service-level capabilities to support mission-critical applications and systems.

Microsoft is providing business customers with the flexibility to choose between traditional on-premise implementations, services hosted by Microsoft partners and now Online services that reside in Microsoft’s data centres

“This new era of connected computing is about empowering people and businesses to balance the power of the Internet with the rich interactivity and high performance of client and server software,” said Microsoft Business Division president Jeff Raikes.

“With today’s announcements, we are taking a significant step forward by combining our deep client and server software experience with our strong commitment to delivering flexible services offerings for our wide variety of customers and their unique needs.”

For more Web Applications news, click here.

Microsoft dips toe in the Saas waters

MICROSOFT has launched its Office 2007 productivity suite as a subscription package in South Africa in a move interpreted as a growing acceptance of the software-as-a-service (Saas) model.

The company plans to charge users a A$33 (R199) subscription fee for three months, with users able to top up as they go.

The service is based on a mobile phone pre-paid system and will only be available on new computers.

The company said the model would make its Office software more affordable to users in emerging markets like South Africa.

Microsoft said the service would also be launched in Romania this month, though there is no word yet whether it will be rolled-out to the emerging market giants of Brazil, Russia, India and China (which with South Africa are known collectively as BRICS.)

“We need to think differently in order to address the needs of the next five billion users of computers and how we can make technology accessible to them,” Microsoft South Africa executive Cyril Belikof said in a statement.

The company says the Saas model would make its software more affordable to students, home users and small business who might not have otherwise been able to afford the one-off payment for the off-the-shelf package.

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