I have been behind on my blogging (have you noticed)?  I was at the Bristol SBS group Christmas dinner (did I say thanks yet to Richard and Mark?) and we got to discussing Office Live.  So first off, as to what Live is, why not go and have a look at Eileen Browns blog on it and then lets get down to the discussion points.

They were:

1. Who really wants this type of solution?
2. Does Live compete with SBS?
3. Can I make money out of Live
4. If someone has Live, can I sell them SBS too?
5. If someone has Live, can I "upgrade" them from this to SBS?

So lets answer these is order:

Who really wants this type of solution?

Well, there are loads of small businesses out there that want a web site, some more professional e-mail addresses than simply "[email protected]" (don't try mailing this address, if it exists, then they won't like it, but more likely it will not).  Office Live will give them a website of http://www.somecompany.com e-mail addresses that at "@somecompany.com" and a simple way to build the site - for free.  They can then upgrade to get a bunch of other things too, but especially if they are small - this is an amazing solution.  If they are larger, then they might not use all the facilities, but they will use some of them - especially the features of the paid for services, which every time I present are seen as amazing value for money.

Does Live compete with SBS?

No, Yes, well sometimes.  If you look at the services offered, some of them could be provided on SBS, but bearing in mind that SBS does so much more and something's that Live offers you could do on SBS, but probably would not, lets look at what is what.

You could host e-mail, calendar, contacts, web sites, WSS sites etc on SBS, but would you really do website's and WSS sites on SBS - sometimes, but not always - it depends where people are located vs the network and whether they are internal or external to the local LAN - internal - SBS, external - possibly Live.

With the Live services of mail, calendar and contacts - this is like a baby version of what exchange offers, so get them used to the idea, then as/when they need sbs, upgrade them.

One really, really important point to remember is that Live offers some of the exchange functionality, but it does not come with Outlook and there is much more to SBS than Exchange.  Managing servers, clients, patches, software, internal shared resources, firewall and LOB applications all require a server, which Live is not.

Can I make money out of Live?

There are various ways to make money out out Live, but if we assume that someone does not have a SBS server, then there will be:

• Live setup and configuration
• Showing the user how to use the basic functions
• Web site editing
• If they want the collaboration facilities, then these are based on WSS v3, so this should be familiar to you, either as a development platform, or a template based solution similar to companyweb for SBS 2003
• Client PC management inc security and patch management
• PC support

If someone looks at Live, can I sell them SBS too?

The functionality of Live overlap with that of Exchange (except they don't get Outlook, so web based interface of Outlook Express today), but it is only overlap.  The web based tool is Hotmail based rather than OWA and the mobile experience is not that great either vs Outlook, Activesync & Windows Mobile.  The Collab functions, being based on WSS do overlap with WSS hosted on your own server, but there are a few things your customer will need to think about:

1) Where are people located vs data - if there is plenty of data, being on the fastest data connection to it is ideal - if people are all in the office -then using the LAN and SBS for Exchange &/or WSS makes sense.  If people are all over the country or world, connected over the internet, then hosted on the internet is better

2) How much control do they want - they get much less over data size, security, protection etc if using a hosted service

3) Something as simple as sharing files, if there is no service can be a pig. SBS provides many services beyond Exchange and the ones I came up with were:

• Secure File Sharing (XP hits a limit at 10 PCs
• Password Management (try managing this with more than 5 PCs and a peer to peer network)
• In-office WSS based solutions
• Outlook as a client
• Patch Management
• Internet connection management, including firewall access
• Remote access into LAN and PCs in office
• LOB platform, including SQL

If someone has Live, can I "upgrade" them to SBS?

Yes, if they wish to move off of Live, then it is not all or nothing, but it is possible to export the information via Outlook Express and re-import it into Outlook and their SBS Exchange account.  Likewise, if they have the collaboration solution, this can be saved and re-imported into SBS WSS, but worst case they could have some hosted on an SBS box and some on the web, as per their need.

I hope this clears things up a bit.

ttfn

David