Microsoft BPOS (Business Productivity Online Suite) has been available in the US for over a year, the UK for 6-7 months and is appearing in more and more countries all the time.
It offers online versions of:
- Exchange
- Sharepoint
- Live Meeting
- Office Communications
and has been seeing great success in all areas. Today Microsoft have announced something that will surely lead to even greater adoption…a price cut 🙂
Pricing was previously:
it is now:
All pricing is per user per month.
The suite which includes all the online products above is now the same price as Exchange on it’s own!
While BPOS has always represented great value for money, price is often a big consideration for customers…especially in these times of economic recalibration. I believe that these price cuts will really drive an upsurge in BPOS adoption…which is good for everyone!
You can download the announcement document here.
Cloudy with a chance of Licensing 
BPOS is still out of the reach of smaller businesses, and perhaps overkill. It is too complex for smaller companies and needs implementation support, which costs extra – a hidden cost. See the following cost comparison of BPOS and web based competitors.
Hi,
Thanks for stopping by.
I have to say that I don’t really agree with your points, although it is always interesting get other people’s points of view.
There is very little complexity involved as that is all handled by MS in the datacenter and implementation support, while available, is certainly not required in all cases.
If it is a small business starting up then they can start fresh with Exchange Online, thus not needing any imlpementation support. If they have an existing web based email system, Microsoft provide a lot of info to help them out with migrating etc themselves.
In fact, even if they did decide to bring in an outside engineer to help with the implementation, the cost savings of BPOS would more than cover that. They would then realise those cost savings each following year too.
While Exchange does contain many features that are perhaps more than a small business needs to start with, Exchange Online means that, as they grow, they can grow into the system.
Again, thanks for stopping by…
Cheers
Rich
The comment by poster above(SM Rana) is completely biased towards their product of HyperOffice. The comparision between Google and Microsoft for enterprise services is no comparision at all. You cannot rely on Google for continuing to provide their “free” enterprise services, just considering their recent decision to abandon “Google Wave” because of “less user adoption”. Organizations rely on Enterprise Agreeements for repliably providing the services, which Microsoft had done for several years. MSO BPOS provides outstanding savings in infrastructure and personnel costs for small business. Thanks for calrifying Rich!