Microsoft mulls free Web-based business software
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Microsoft Corp. said on Thursday it may  offer a free, advertising-supported version of its basic word  processing and spreadsheet software, in an apparent bid to fend  off a nascent challenge from Google Inc. in the business  software market.
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Microsoft has updated its Office Live Small Business hosted service with new e-commerce and marketing tools to help small businesses sell their products and services online.The new version of Microsoft&#39;s service to help small businesses build a Web presence, unveiled Monday, now includes Store Manager, a tool aimed at helping small businesses build their own e-commerce sites as well as storefronts on eBay.com to sell their products. Store Manager costs US$39.95 per month.Microsoft also has added a beta version of an e-mail marketing service that allows users to send out regular e-mail newsletters, promotions and updates. The service is free for up to 200 e-mails per month during the beta, the company said.Other new features to Office Live Small Business include custom domain name and business e-mail that is available free for one year and $14.95 per year after that. Through the service, businesses can privately register their domain names and brand up to 100 business e-mail accounts, each with 5G bytes of storage, according to Microsoft.Microsoft also has added Web-site customization tools; support for Firefox 2.0 so Mac users can use Office Live Small Business tools and features; and an improved interface and enhanced search ability in Contact Manager, the service&#39;s contact-management system, to the updated service.Office Live Small Business is Microsoft&#39;s Web-based service aimed at giving small businesses a Web site as well as providing basic management, worker collaboration, accounting, and CRM (customer relationship management) capabilities. Microsoft defines small businesses as those with 50 employees or fewer. The service originally was called Office Live but Microsoft recently changed the name.People often mistake Office Live for a Web-based version of Microsoft&#39;s Office productivity suite, one of the reasons Microsoft added &quot;Small Business&quot; to the service&#39;s name. Eventually, Microsoft does plan to offer features of its Office software online as a service, plans Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates discussed Monday at the Microsoft Office System Developer Conference in San Jose, California.Microsoft said Office Live Small Business currently has nearly 600,000 customers in the countries where it is currently available -- the U.S., U.K., France, Germany and Japan.More information about Office Live Small Business can be found on the home page for the service.
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A top Microsoft executive defended desktop application software, the source of the company&#39;s revenue for three decades, arguing on Tuesday that even services-based companies such as Google still need it.The comments by Jeff Raikes, president of Microsoft&#39;s business applications division, come as Microsoft is trying to position itself as a company capable of delivering applications over the Internet as well as on PCs, its traditional distribution model.&quot;It&#39;s interesting some our competitors who like to espouse the idea that software is dead,&quot; said Raikes said. &quot;I think they&#39;re worried that actually people like a lot of what they have at their fingertips and the real success is to use a combination.&quot;Microsoft has come under increasing pressure from companies such as Salesforce.com, which specializes in Web-based CRM (customer relationship management) applications and Google, whose&#160;Docs suite is an online alternative to Microsoft&#39;s Office suite. Web-based applications tend to be cheaper, easier to update and require little installation since applications are delivered through a Web browser.Raikes claimed during a keynote to about 3,300 customers and partners at its Convergence conference that only Microsoft can deliver &quot;the best of the traditional software model in combination with software as a service.&quot;Later, Raikes said Google realized its Web-based applications need further enhancement on the desktop by introducing Google Gears, a set of open-source tools to build applications that can run offline and then sync when a computer comes back online.&quot;It&#39;s fascinating to me to see that even some of those companies now are trying to backtrack on what we&#39;ve been saying and to offer things like Gears in order to be able to be offline and or take advantage of global computing power,&quot; Raikes said.Microsoft is using the desktop products such as Outlook e-mail and Internet Explorer as the user interface for hosted versions of its business applications. The big push at the Convergence conference is for the forthcomingrelease of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0, previously known by its code-name Titan. It will come in both on-premise and hosted versions.Microsoft, which started its business applications division in 2001, now has 475,000 users of its CRM products in 11,000 customer companies, Raikes said. In its fourth quarter, Microsoft added 85,000 new users, he said.&#160;
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Microsoft Corp.&#039;s best-known business software is for creating spreadsheets, documents and presentations, but the company is hoping to convince corporations that it also can be the one-stop shop for sophisticated communications technology.
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ThinkFree Inc. has added offline support to its online application suite and launched it as a $7-a-month alternative to Microsoft Office.
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Help is on the way - from Microsoft. The software giant is readying a new help and support Web site -- scheduled for the fall -- that has promised benefits such as product-specific troubleshooting and assisted support, centralized options, personalized views, and improved search functions. Microsoft has also simplified its incident submission process, providing easier access to outstanding support requests.
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Microsoft Corp. started testing on  Monday a new computer server software that allows corporate  customers to make Web-based phone calls through its Office  suite of business software.
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IT has never been able to prove it's true value to the business, and as such it is treated as a cost center, which is the first thing to get cut in poorly run companies. But with Web 2.0 booming, all the assumptions that you hold about IT should be put on notice: change is in the air. Web 2.0 companies have had to grow their own technology for economic functionality. Free means crap right? Wrong. How many of you keep Yahoo! Mail running on your BlackBerry's along with Exchange because you know Exchange will be down sooner or later?
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Microsoft is planning free online versions of its word processing and spreadsheet programs.
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Not even a club with no rules...yet Microsoft may be going gangbusters on Web 2.0-related technology, but the arrival of tools such as Expression and WPF means little unless they are out there being used.â¦
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Microsoft plans to introduce a tool to let users access its ERP applications through Office or SharePoint, along with other products, at its Convergence user group conference this week.
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New versions of Office, Exchange, too. But are businesses ready to buy?
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Microsoft is offering a new subscription model to small businesses that will allow them to use the company&#39;s software for less cost than the currently available licensing model.The plan, called Open Value Subscription program, is part of Microsoft&#39;s effort to give small businesses more flexible and affordable options for purchasing software, said Cindy Bates, Microsoft&#39;s general manager for U.S. small business.The new plan costs about a third of the license-only expense for the current licensing program open to small business, called the Open Value program, Bates said. The plan is cheaper because Microsoft offers upfront discounts for software purchased through the subscription program, and also allows customers to increase or decrease pricing over the three-year subscription period if their business needs change, she said.Open Value Subscription includes Microsoft&#39;s Software Assurance program, the company&#39;s software maintenance and support program for business customers.Microsoft defines small businesses as those with 50 employees or fewer. Bates called 50 employees the &quot;break point&quot; for when a company hires IT management. Up until that number, &quot;usually it&#39;s the business owner or office manager&quot; handling the IT system, she said.Businesses will be able to sign up for the Open Value Subscription program beginning in March, Bates said. Microsoft products available through the program include Microsoft Office Small Business, Office Professional +, Windows Vista Business Upgrade, Small Business Server Client Access License (CAL), Core CAL, Desktop Professional Suite, and Small Business Desktop Suite.As part of its small-business outreach, Microsoft also this week is unveiling a partner program called &quot;Big Easy,&quot; which invests about $10 million in subsidies to small businesses purchasing products through partners.Through the program, small businesses purchasing certain products through authorized specialist partners will get a certain percentage of money back that they can use to purchase other services from those partners, Bates said.For example, a small business would get a maximum of 22 percent of the money it spends if it buys six or more products that are on the approved list. Bates said Microsoft has figured the average return will be about 15 percent to 17 percent on purchases for small businesses.Products available for subsidies under the Big Easy program include Microsoft Office products, Exchange Server, Forefront Security for Exchange Server, System Center Essentials, Project, Visio, Office SharePoint Server, Forefront Security for SharePoint, and Internet Security and Acceleration Server 2006, among others.More information about Open Value Subscription can be found on Microsoft&#39;s Web site. The company also provides more information about the Big Easy on its Microsoft Small Business Community Blog.
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Google and Microsoft both offer free business directory assistance services. Which one is better?
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Microsoft Corp.  said on  Tuesday it plans to introduce a Web-based version of its sales  and marketing software in 2007 as it targets rivals like  Salesforce.com , Oracle Corp. , and SAP AG   in a fast-growing market.
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Microsoft Corp. hopes to better meet the back-office needs of smaller businesses with a new take on enterprise resource planning (ERP) software called Dynamics Entrepreneur Solution.
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SANTA CLARA, CALIF. -- Noting two evolving areas of software licensing, Microsoft is pondering how to license when multiple instances of an application are run on a single computer, but is not eyeing a plan for utility-based computing, in which charges are based on individual usage.