Microsoft Gets Serious About Collaboration and Storage
February 23rd, 2008 (6:00am) Jason Harris 7 Comments
When it comes to doing business on the web, one of the main issues we face involves sharing files with team mates, stakeholders, and customers. There are tools such as BaseCamp and Box.Net, but if you want an alternative, two products 
from Microsoft might be just what you’re looking for.
Windows Live SkyDrive will allow you have up to 5GB of online storage and Office Live Workspace serves as your personal collaboration space on the web. We’ll elaborate on both both these services.
Windows Live SkyDrive was recently bumped to 5GB from 1GB of online storage for its users. SkyDrive is plainly a storage area on the web. Think of it as your own locker for you to keep files on. The online storage space was thought to be a more contested market. Google has been rumored to be offering a Gdrive (the user-created name for their online storage space).
SkyDrive recently lost its Beta status and also added support for many new countries including Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile,
Colombia, Denmark, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador,
Finland, France, Guatemala, Honduras, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the
Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Peru,
Puerto Rico, Portugal, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan,
and Turkey.
Office Live Workspace offers more collaboration surrounding documents and workspaces. Think of Office Live Workspace as a miniature, personal version of SharePoint. You can simply share office documents or alternatively, click “Create A Workspace” and build either: Project Workspace, School Workspace, Sports Team Workspace, and so on. Each workspace type has specific site features for that audience. For example the Meeting workspace will facilitate a attendee list, meeting notes, minutes archive, and a to-do list.
These tools can add some much needed functionality to your web working life.
Which web based collaboration tools do you use the most?
7 Comments Post your own comment
Ludwik C. Siadlak says: February 23rd, 2008 11:47am
It seems Microsoft had just experienced WWD-effect :)
Eric Castro says: February 23rd, 2008 12:33pm
Oh, how I wish sites such as Office Live and Google Docs would accept the changing nature of the computing world and start off Safari-compatible. Having to switch browsers simply to use a service decreases the likelihood of actually using the service.
Wayne says: February 24th, 2008 6:43am
I would recommend taking a look at Joint Contact (www.jointcontact.com). It support group collaboration of documents, tasks, discussion groups and other items. It is also supported under Safari and Firefox (as well as IE).
Business Hacks mobile edition says: February 25th, 2008 9:00am
[...] Amazingly, Google still trails in this category: Although Firefox extensions like Gspace let you leverage your Gmail account for online file storage, Google still doesn’t have a SkyDrive to call its own — yet. [via Web Worker Daily] [...]
Garry Rush says: February 25th, 2008 9:44am
Well, I don’t think that Microsoft guys managed to develop something useful finally. They will never be able to support their product as good as small companies do. For example, I use Wrike, and they answer all my questionswithin an hour. It would really be impossible with Microsoft.
Google Sites Now Live To Collaborate - GigaOM says: February 27th, 2008 9:01pm
[...] is not the first one to make a collaboration available — 37Signals’ Basecamp, Microsoft ’s Office Live WorkSpace, Zoho and GoPlan come to mind — but it has come up a pretty compelling offering that is going to [...]
lenusmaria says: September 14th, 2008 1:58am
I am using zigime workspace and its quite good. Its quite different from Google Docs and office live though, but useful. I think it will take some time to become popular, especially among Groups but nowadays people are enjoying in zigime workspace