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Office Live Workspace: Shadowed by Google Docs?
9/9/2008
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Microsoft last Wednesday touted the success of its online extension to Microsoft Office, a free browser-based application that's still in beta release. One million people so far have signed up to use the Microsoft Office Live Workspace Beta after six months of the beta's public availability, according to an announcement issued by the company.
While the 1 million figure seems impressive, it's still just one tenth of the number of total Google Apps users, although some would contend that such a comparison is unfair.
The key word is to understanding Microsoft's application, an adjunct to the company's Office suite, is "Workspace." The application isn't an online version with Excel, PowerPoint and Word. Instead, Microsoft Office Live Workspace provides a place to store documents over the Internet cloud, allowing others to access them via a Web browser. It specifically works via Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox browsers.
Microsoft's Software Plus Services Approach
Microsoft Office Live Workspace solution conceptually fits within Microsoft's overall "software plus services" approach, which envisions a world of installed software applications plus access to hosted applications via a Web browser or custom client app.
While many might consider Google Docs to be a competitor to Microsoft Office Live Workspace, Microsoft observer Paul Thurrott made a distinction in his blog, saying that "Office Live Workspace is not a Google Docs competitor at all."
The main reason the apps don't compete, Thurrott contends, is Microsoft's software plus services approach. That approach varies from Google's practice of hosting all of its applications entirely over the Internet.
The chief benefit of Microsoft Office Live Workspace is the ability to access files from home and work, as well as to collaborate with others on documents. The solution lets people save various file formats. It supports Excel, PowerPoint and Word file formats in the Microsoft Office suite, as well as PDFs and various image-file formats. Online security is enabled via Microsoft Forefront for SharePoint.
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