Microsoft Office Live - Web Hosting Threat?
Microsoft Office Live promises to give people and businesses every tool they will need to get something up and running on the World Wide Web. How strong is the product and how will this effect the hundreds of Web hosts out there? Well I’ll give you a few of my thoughts and opinions and let you decide for yourself.
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So the first question to answer is what is Office Live all about? For the sake of keeping things simple, I’ll just focus on the Office Live Basic for right now. Here is what the folks at Microsoft say about that:
Create your own professional Web site in minutes! Microsoft Office Live Basics is the perfect way to get started on the Web. It features all the basics you need to create your first Web site, including free hosting, Web site statistics, personalized domain name, and e-mail addresses.
Now if this all plays off to perfection, then Web hosts have something they should really worry about. If the execution of these services aren’t that great, then customers will look somewhere else.
What Microsoft wants to do is bundle every aspect of a Web hosting account under one roof. Now as I said before, if they can pull it off, then more power to them. You have hosting, design, E-mail and management all covered.
Now where is Microsoft making the mistake? They are aiming this towards business. For the most part, if you are running a business, you are going to hire a team to do this stuff for you. What about small businesses? Well, that is one market they could get. Small business isn’t a big enough market to keep this up and running.
What they need to do, to become successful is aim this product at everybody. The majority of Web sites out there aren’t small business. They are Aunt Sally and Uncle Elmer trying to post Christmas pictures. Make things more friendly towards the average Tom or Jane on the street.
So we go back to my first question. Do Web hosts have anything to fear? I don’t think so. Not yet anyways. Even if the product is as good as it gets, I feel like Microsoft is fumbling on the marketing of the idea.
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