Pedro Innecco

I’ve been watching the development of Office Live since it became available as a beta (and I able to join in), and I always had hopes that the product would get better in time. However, I am sad to think that I am probably wrong and this product is at a dead end, offering no differential/competitive advantage over other products out there.

It is not my objective to troll Microsoft here, but I want Microsoft to know why I can’t see myself using this product. In fact, I’d like to think this is a constructive criticism, and I did send a feedback to the Office Live Team concerning all the points I am raising here. But I would honestly like to hear back from the community as well if I am wrong about something (misconceptions perhaps), if Microsoft is working to improve on the points I am raising, or perhaps if anyone in the community had similar frustrations but found some sort of workaround.

I use Google Apps for a lot of my domains, and the standard (free) version of Google Apps does it quite well for me. But for some of these domains, I need is a simple Intranet, accessible through a subdomain, where I can collaborate with fellow workers. Google Apps offer their Sites application which could be used for such purpose, but I think it is way too simplistic (even the commercial version of Google Apps).

In technical terms what I needed for these particular domains is an online service like Microsoft SharePoint, which basically is what Office Live is based on. If possible a free one, which I could gradually upgrade by buying extra/commercial services and tools according to my needs.

So when I heard that Office Live would offer a Small Business version for free, I thought that my prayers have been answered. So I signed-in for the service, and based on my experiences so far, I was left quite disappointment as simply couldn’t use the service. Here is think Office Live failed to launch:

1. The requirement of the entire domain name to be redirected to the Office Live service (i.e.: can’t use subdomains):
   Not to be able to use subdomains with Office Live is, to say the least, inconvenient. I want to have an Intranet at http://intranet.mydomain.com but I still want to keep my company’s public website somewhere else, and I am pretty confident that I am not the only one out there with such requirement. Plus I do have other online services that depend on the configuration of subdomains and other DNS records, so I MUST have a proper dashboard where I can administer my domain name. Here is an article that gets more into this premise.
2. Once I sign in, I am presented with some sort of overview page that I can’t customise:
   My point here is, after I sign in into my Office Live account (through http://home.officelive.com), I am presented with the same annoying – sorry for the strong word, but it is annoying – “Getting started” content, explaining how to design my site (already have it, thank you), get a domain (already have it but you don’t allow me to use a subdomain from it since want is Intranet functionality), set-up business email (already have email service from somewhere else). The page is filled with links to instructions and guides. Uff… Come on! I want to present my company’s Intranet here.
3. Allow only one Office Live Account per Windows Live ID:
   Really don’t get this. Simply put, Microsoft competitors (i.e.: Google Apps) don’t have such limitation.
   I think it is important to say that, with regards to the points I made above, Google Apps doesn’t have these limitations (not even with the standard/free version). In fact, a major downer of Google Apps is that they fix almost their entire business model in web-only clients/applications.

NOTE: Recently Google started to realise that they can’t escape the value of certain desktop applications, and started to give-in to the needs of their customers. Google’s Microsoft Outlook Sync Tool is a good example (but not available to users of the standard/free version of Google Apps). There is also some 3rd party add-ins to Microsoft Office to make it work with Google App sites as if they were SharePoint/Office Live sites. I tried one but it was still a long way to go. Also, there are many protests of Google Apps customers complaining that several services and features offered to standard end-user Google accounts aren’t available in Google Apps (e.g.: Google Wave), or have limited features in Google Apps.

Microsoft on the other hand have what I believe to be a nicer business model, which is the integration of thick-client (desktop) applications such as Word and Groove with their offering of online clouds (Live Workspace, Office Live, Online Services), while they are also working on online version of Office Applications (neat!). I am anxiously waiting for the release of Office 2010 and the new Windows Live Essentials (Wave 4).

However, concerning Office Live I am not that enthusiastic. From what I have been reading on the Internet and also based on my experience so far with Office 2010 (although at the time I am writing this the product is yet to be released and I am using a pre-release version), I reckon that Office Live will have a sad ending. The current version of the Office Live add-in isn’t supported in Office 2010, meaning that documents stored in Office Live (or Live Workspace for that matter) can’t be accessed by Office 2010 applications. Office 2010 instead has built-in support for SkyDrive, which indicates to me (and well, to a lot of other people to be honest) a change of focus by Microsoft where SkyDrive will replace Office Live (and Live Workspace), at least with regards to online document storage.

But what about the other features provided by Office Live, such as Team Workspaces, e-mails, contact management and so on? Well I call this another hint, but you might think this is just a hunch: Microsoft Groove 2007 used to work perfectly with Office Live, without the need of any add-in. Now as for the new version of Groove in Office 2010 (which has been renamed to SharePoint Workspace 2010), when you try to connect to Office Live library, it gives an error saying that “SharePoint workspace cannot sync with the specified SharePoint site because its server version is not supported.” Another hunch, perhaps more obvious, is that when you try to use the built-in option to save a file on a document library from Office Live, it simply won’t work. So to me these are yet more evidences that Office Live is going to be deprecated.

It seems that based on the evolution one can notice from other Microsoft products and services, in particular Microsoft Online Services (which is in a way a more serious version of Office Live with a vast set of enterprise features and services, but there is no free version), Office 2010 (supporting SkyDrive but no Office Live add-in) and Windows Live Essentials (which will offer Office Online applications in its next release); and on the other hand no progress with Office Live, I can only conclude that Office Live will be discontinued.

It is a shame, really. I honestly thought that Office Live could go a long way and that the Small Business Edition would be the product that would stand-up for the match against Google Apps Standard Edition. Perhaps is too soon to tell if Microsoft is going will try to keep up with an offer of free Online Services to compete with Google’s, since all I hear at the moment is about Microsoft Online Services. But as far as Office Live goes, I think it is a flat-liner and I wouldn’t touch it until we get some pulse back from Microsoft, which might take a while.

Or perhaps, concerning a decent intranet/collaboration portal, there is no such thing such as “free lunch.”