Office Live Comes November 15

In excess of 160,000 small businesses were involved in the testing program of Office Live and now Microsoft has announced that the set of online services reunited under the Office Live umbrella will exit the beta stage on November 15. At this date, Office Live will debut exclusively in the United States, but the program will expand in beta stage to France, Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom.

A key aspect of Office Live is its distinction from the Office System. Addressing small businesses, the online program from Microsoft will include Office Live adManager Beta and integration with Microsoft Office Accounting Express 2007. Improved Web design tools and templates, enhanced storage capabilities, brand customizable email accounts and calendars are also a part of Office Live.

"Small businesses face the same pressures as large enterprises to continuously improve their offerings, raise their market profile, attract new customers and generate repeat business," said Rajesh Jha, corporate vice president, Microsoft Office Live. "However, they typically lack the in-house IT expertise and dedicated technology budgets of most big companies. Office Live helps small-business owners close that competitive gap by giving them an affordable, comprehensive package that provides everything from Web site design to instant messaging accounts to customer and business contact management, and is customizable by Microsoft partners that can create new and industry-specific solutions."

The program comes into three budget variants. Microsoft Office Live Basics offers its collection of online services free of charge. This option comes with a 500 MB storage website and 25 branded e-mail accounts. Microsoft Office Live Essentials has a price tag of $19.95 per month and is an upgrade to the Basic version delivering one GB of extra website storage, 50 email accounts and limited access to Microsoft Office Live Business Contact Manager and online Workspaces.

Microsoft Office Live Premium is - at $39.95 per month - Microsoft's top offer with Office Live. "Services include all the features of Office Live Basics and Office Live Essentials as well as an additional 2 GB of Web site storage; increased storage of 2 GB for the 50 company-branded e-mail, calendar and instant messaging accounts; and an increased capacity for 20 additional users and 1 GB of storage for the Workspaces. Office Live Premium also provides a rich set of Internet-based applications to help small-business owners streamline and automate the daily business tasks of managing their customers, projects and documents," revealed Microsoft.