It's great to be able to finally talk about Microsoft Online as it's what has been consuming most of my time lately and the reason for my recent Redmond trip. It's the next pillar in our Software + Services strategy and has literally just been announced so here's what's what:

We’ve announced plans to deliver a wide variety of new solutions during the coming months under two key families of service offerings: Live and Online. Live is known to many though has been the source of some confusion with an array of offerings but with the introduction of the Online brand it helps to bring clarity. Allow me to explain:

• Live denotes services designed primarily for individuals, and virtual work groups. With that in mind, they span across entertainment, comms, and productivity. Examples would be Skydrive, Photo Gallery and Office Live. Their focus is simplicity and make most sense where there isn’t professional IT support at hand – largely as they don’t require that level of expertise.

• Online services on the other hand are for organisations with more advanced IT needs. The keyword here is choice – the world of so called “on premise” servers doesn’t go away, nor do services hosted by 3^rd parties but added to that mix now are services that reside in Microsoft owned data centres. As of today, those services are Exchange Online, Office SharePoint Online and Office Communications Online.

I’ll be following up with more details during this week and the weeks ahead. There are some other interesting announcements today as well

• Microsoft Office Live Workspace -- a new web-based feature of Office which lets people access their documents online and share their work with others.
• Microsoft Exchange Labs - a new R&D program for testing next-generation messaging and unified communications capabilities in high-scale environments.
• The renaming of Microsoft Office Live to Microsoft Office Live Small Business.
• Microsoft BizTalk Services -- a building block service that enables developers to more rapidly and cost-effectively build composite applications. IMHO, this has the potential to be huge as it has the potential to help unlock the long tail of commerce, especially small business in emerging markets.

Later today (or tomorrow actually) I’ll annotate these announcements on top of the recent Ray Ozzie's Financial Analyst Presentation and you will begin to see the Software + Services story coming to life. I know Scoble and others have lamented what they’ve seen as slow progress since Ray joined but this stuff takes time – not just the technology but the business relationships too and that’s what has been keeping many of us busy. Today is just the start of a shift.

There is a tonne of questions this stuff brings to life and it’s what makes working at Microsoft a buzz after 10 years. I sense another series of changes afoot and it’s great to be involved. I’ll be posting a LOT more about this stuff from here on and you can find more at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/default.mspx and www.officelive.com

Initial coverage - lots of people have gone for the Google compete angle. Inevitable I guess

• Techmeme
• Liveside
• Seattle Times
• Mary Jo Foley

Game on.