Microsoft Corp has teamed up with 14 partners to offer its Office 2000 productivity suite, hosted on the internet, and available for lease through its new Bchannel web site, by the end of the year. Separately, Microsoft’s old rival Corel Corp has launched a similar pilot scheme with FutureLink Corp, offering the WordPerfect 2000 suite for rent over the net. Intriguingly, the two firms have radically differing pricing models for the hosted applications. Corel will offer its productivity suite, through FutureLink, for $10 a month. Microsoft says that, depending on the extra services its partners decide to offer, they can charge between $50 to $500 a month.
Microsoft’s partners will offer a full version of Office 2000, including Excel, Word and Powerpoint, hosted on a server using either Windows 2000 or NT4 and Windows Terminal Server. The partners include Concentric Networks, Qwest Communications and British Telecom. Kairi Atnsien, product manager for Office Online, said that most companies were looking at rolling out hosting services over six to nine months but two, FutureLink and TeleComputing, had hosting services up and running.
Microsoft was originally said to be considering offering a $15 a month lease for Office Online. Atnsien admitted that the Office license costs were a very minimal part of any $50 to $500 package. She expects that partners will offer additional services, such as messaging and collaborative applications, as part of an ASP package. The pricing model of what she called this hot, new market hasn’t really shaken out yet, Atnsien admitted.
Corel and FutureLink are offering WordPerfect 2000, hosted on a Citrix metaframe and Winbridge platform, for $10 a month. However, a Corel spokesperson admits that the Canadian company also needs time to grasp the dynamics of the market. We need to understand how applications play in this space, the spokesperson explained. Corel is examining the business model requirements, customer needs and the software technology needed in the ASP market.
Sun has said that it won’t be charging a license fee for its recently acquired StarOffice productivity suite. The company is leaving pricing down to individual ASPs.
