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Microsoft Office Live & Office Web & Office Online, Oh My!
These days, I can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a small business owner excited by the promise of Microsoft’s online offerings based on the ubiquitous Office Suite.
The problem is, that no one really seems to understand exactly what it is that is available now, what is coming soon, and what has been announced, but is not coming in the immediate future.
So, let’s start from the beginning.
Microsoft Office
Microsoft Office is the collection of applications that have been around for years. To the vast majority of people, both business owners and not, the Office suite is composed of Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.
These applications are sold as Microsoft Office Home and Student. (OneNote is now included as well, but remains relatively unknown.)
I have landed many a consulting gig just by walking a business owner through how they could save money by buying a non-professional version, even though they are a business, because they don’t utilize any of the "business" applications.
For those of us in the industry, we know that the Professional edition of Microsoft Office also includes Access, Publisher, and most importantly, Outlook. It also includes Accounting Express now, but that is another story.
Outlook is the application that most people are surprised to find out comes with Office, because it doesn’t necessarily really fit, and because many businesses consider Outlook to be an "Exchange Client," not a piece of Office software.
Microsoft Office Online
To understand the naming conventions of today, it is important to go back in time a few years. Not that long ago, Google’s only application was searching, and there was no way to build any kind of web-based application for something like word processing. The power and bandwidth simply weren’t there.
It was during this time, that Microsoft began making available templates, add-ins, plug-ins, and other technologies for Microsoft Office applications by putting them on a website. Not surprisingly, it was named Microsoft Office Online.
Fast forward to today, and you can start to see the confusion coming. Microsoft Office Online continues to be the place where you get templates and other things for the fully installed Microsoft Office Applications on your hard drive, not where online versions of Office applications are hosted.
Since the name Microsoft Office Online is already taken, other monikers were required.
Microsoft Live Workspace
Microsoft’s first strategy, or at least the first one it talked publicly about, to blunt the growing threat posed by Google’s online computing moves was to develop a new wave of technologies and services collectively branded under the "Live" name.
Microsoft Office Live Workspace is currently available to anyone with a Windows Live account. The service is in open beta which means that although not officially supported, it can be used by anyone without needing to be signed up for any sort of beta program.
Microsoft Office Live Workspace offers a way for businesses or individuals to store and access their documents electronically in such a way that they can be accessed from anywhere.
On its own, Microsoft Office Live Workspace is no different than dozens of other file sharing and storing websites out there. But, when coupled with the Office Live add-in, Office Live Workspace becomes an online extension of the Office applications installed on your hard drive.
Documents can be created, edited, and saved all from inside of the Office applications without the need to interact specifically with the online browser or workspace. However, this only works with the "Usual 3" of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, and not the "business applications".
It is this tight integration with existing installations of the Office Suite that makes the Office Live Workspace such a powerful tool for business, students, and other individuals. But, it is also the part that is confusing so many people.
Office Live Workspace is an online desktop and file system, it is NOT online versions of the applications themselves. Without an installed copy of Office, the Office Live Workspace will only allow a user to create a "note" or "list".
These are rich formatted text files, not Word documents. In other words, without MS Word installed on your hard drive, Office Live Workspace is useless to you to create Word documents. But, once the Office Live add-in has been installed, the integration with the desktop applications makes it appear that you can indeed create Word documents, and others, from the Live Workspace.
As this picture shows, there is a "New Word Document" choice, but only because I have Word installed on my hard drive.
It seems that a lot of people are missing this nuance.
Microsoft Office Web Applications
Finally, we have Microsoft Office Web Applications. This is what all of the people asking me about online Office products have in mind.
Office Web Apps have been announced by Microsoft, but they are not available yet. The Office Web Applications will be, according to Microsoft, a "stripped down" version of the familiar Microsoft Office products that you install on your computer.
With these applications you could create a new Word document even if Word was not installed on your PC. Screenshots released by Microsoft show the familiar Office 2007 interface, but give little insight into what exactly will be included when the applications are ready.
Furthermore, unlike the other online services, the online versions of Office may not be free. So far, Microsoft has only said that they plan to offer Office Web through Office Live Workspace which comes in both pay and ad-supported options.
So, while there will be the benefit of accessing not only your documents, but your programs as well from any computer with a compatible browser (so far that includes IE, Firefox, and Safari), it won’t necessarily be a way to get out of having to purchase MS Office.
For now, I can only advise the people I talk with to continue to purchase the Office suite to install on their computers. Then, if they find the need for either collaboration or accessing documents from multiple computers, they might find that Office Live Workspace is a nice addition to their Office needs, but certainly not a replacement.
That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t check them out. There may be great uses for you or your organization in the current spectrum of online offerings.
Even if not, you can rest assured that your customers, whether executives at your company, or clients, will be hearing about these new Microsoft services and will want to know what they can do for them.
Related Posts:
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- Free Microsoft Office Suite? Sweet …
- Free Microsoft Office 2010 Upgrade
- Live Writer – Windows Live Tools Beta 3
- Is Bing Making Microsoft More Competitive Online?
- Office 2010 Technical Preview With Windows 7
- Microsoft Live Search Now With SearchPerks
2 Responses to “Microsoft Office Live & Office Web & Office Online, Oh My!”
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Shehzad Ahmad Says:
December 16th, 2008 at 1:04 am
That clears up a lot of confusion. Very informative.
Rudy Brinker Says:
October 15th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
A 58yr Old dog here trying to keep up with new tricks
Inside Industrial Electrical Apparatus Salesperson by trade
Webmaster of above
also have a Windows Live Spaces blog “Indy’s Rudy”
http://www.SmallerIndiana.com Blog page “Indy’s Rudy ”
FaceBook
Found your site by running a search ” Ohio Office Live websites ” …on google for examples of websites that are hosted by Microsoft Office Live Basic . In my search of Indiana ,Ohio, Illinois I have found 3 general levels of execution. 1) someone who started & quit , 2) Amatuers like myself ( but we are on an upper end of “quality ” , 3) pros like you , That are really into exploiting what this product could do.
My biggest lament is finding time to plug into enough time to step up to train & implement all the bells & whistles ;
Best regards !