November 15, 2006 | Posted By : Isabel Wang at 4:02 PM PERMALINK | Blog Comments (4)

Office Live out of Beta; Microsoft One-Ups Paul Engels

CNet reported this morning that Microsoft's Office Live (free hosting + free domain registration, if you haven't heard)(and Microsoft just became an ICANN-accredited registrar, too) is out of beta.

Liam wrote last week about Hostopia CMO Paul Engels' idea of putting web hosting starter kits on CD. Microsoft has taken the offline distribution concept a step farther. Toshiba and Sony notebooks will come bundled with a desktop link to Office Live and other relevant services, such as AdManager, Microsoft's keyword advertising tool.

CNet pointed out that Microsoft is calling online services its "fourth core", alongside desktop software, server software, and entertainment.

In other news, I just signed up for the newly launched Adobe Document Center (ADC), which I read about on Wired's Monkey Bites blog. Once you've uploaded a file, ADC offers persistent permission and version control. In other words, I won't be able to forward documents you've shared with me. And if you ever make updates, you can lock the old versions and require me to download current ones.

Back in July, Lew Moorman from Rackspace said we're in a world where everything is hostable. That's the good news. On the downside, everyone is getting into hosting, sometimes in groundbreaking ways. As Ted Smith from Peer 1 says, the pressure is mounting on traditional hosting providers to get innovative...

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There seems to be a split. Yes everything is hostable, but do hosts have to offer all these products? So, for example, does X host have to offer the ADC product, or simply make stable servers available to Adobe?

# Posted By David Snead | 11/15/06 11:50 PM

Well, there's only one Adobe, but there are zillions of document owners. So here's the challenge: in a web host -> end user world, everyone's a potential web hosting customer. But if we shift to a web host -> application provider -> user model, we'd have a much smaller pool of prospective web hosting buyers. This means the market most likely won't have room for quite as many web hosts.

# Posted By Isabel Wang | 11/16/06 12:30 PM

Isabel, I am flattered to be depicted as a second place finisher to Microsoft...I dream of Mr. Gates flying me to Redmond to due diligence me and maybe consider an acquisition! In any case I'll stick to the Old School CD ROM tactic for now vs. the hard drive pre-load bundle. I like the voluntary action one has to undertake with the CD which helps qualify the prospect. The gazzilion bloatware items packed onto new PCs (my new Dell worked like a pig with 4 flat tires until my LAN Admin removed 90% of the free crap and links imbedded on the HD) are a pretty crowded playing field...

Paul.

# Posted By Paul D. Engels | 11/21/06 12:49 PM

Pig with 4 flat tires? That's certainly no good compared with the Hostopia flying pig :)

# Posted By Isabel Wang | 11/21/06 5:40 PM

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