Office Live went into beta recently. They’re making a noble attempt by trying to offer a substantial platform to small businesses. Some aspects of Office Live will suit the SME market just fine. It has low to no IT administrative requirement because it’s a hosted offering. Someone will still need to be a super-user who’s knowledgeable enough about broad aspects of the business to make Office Live work though.
But it won’t be really valuable to a small business unless it offers out-of-the-box integration with their own line-of-business applications. In other words, it needs to mashup with a credit union’s member services application and a small clinic’s patient administration application. Or else it’s just another repository that has neat places to put documents.
Developers of small business applications will need to actively determine whether or not an Office Live mashup with their own application is worthwhile. I think the small business market is under served and someone could capitalize by making vertical specific applications on top of Office Live.
Seamless integration is key especially in this market.
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