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Woo hoo! Now I'm able to finally blab about my current project at Microsoft.
At it's most basic, it is a free web hosting solution for small businesses. I created a site for my family in a matter of minutes, found at www.beiterfamily.com. Yeah, I know, it looks like I only spent minutes on it, but that's because I've spent the majority of my time working on the secure site functionality.
Yes, you heard it right. There is an advance solution that provides hosted Sharepoint, including dozens of business apps pre-built especially to help a small business run their day to day operations. Things like project management, customer management and human resources are a few of the things that can be done. And users can add their own Sharepoint lists for whatever they need. Small businesses can automatically sumount the IT and hardware barriers that have prevented them from really embracing the web.
But wait, there's more! There is a 3rd package, called Essentials, that combines the web hosting basics and collaboration tools into a stellar solution, covering a full range of small businesses internet needs!
And this is just the beginning. The final version of Office Live will be coming out later this calendar year. Expect big improvements as we learn from our beta customers what works and what doesn't.
Do I seem really excited about this? You bet! This is the most excited I've been to work on a product at Microsoft since the "old days" of other 1.0 products I worked on such as HomeAdvisor & Realty Desktop. The re-emergence of the web as a great way to do business, brought in part by the proliferation of broadband and recovering economies, has really amped up the energy at Microsoft in many corners. 2006? Feels like 1996 around here... in a good way! |
