SBS 2008 and Office Live Small Business

Office Live Small Business (OLSB) has some integration within SBS 2008. It can be found in the SBS Console. The OLSB has two elements to it:

1. The Office Live Small Business Applications site (SharePoint).
2. The Office Live Small Business Web site.

Out of the box, this is what is included with the default Office Live Small Business Applications site:

• 50MB of storage space.
• 5 Users for the Business Applications site (SharePoint).

Now, the Office Live Small Business Applications may indeed have a place for those small offices that do not have a Small Business Server installed.

But, for clients with more than 5 users and a need for way more than 50MB, here are the associated costs:

Office Live Small Business Per User Costs

Now, factor in the need for additional storage:

Office Live Small Business Per GB Costs

For those clients that have SBS 2003 or SBS 2008 setup and are utilizing the CompanyWeb site internally and externally the Office Live Business Applications site and its associated costs will not make much sense. This is especially true if their CompanyWeb or additional SharePoint setups have been customized for their business workflows and systems.

Essentially, the out-of-the-box setup of the Office Live Small Business Application Web site makes sense for a start up company with no on site SBS server. The Office Live site can be customized to a degree to at least give the company a collaborative starting place on the Web.

The Office Live Small Business Web site on the other hand comes with 500MB out of the box. For most small business Web sites, this will more than suffice. The costs to add more storage space are identical to the above Business Application storage costs.

One thing to keep in mind: The URL for the Office Live Small Business Web site can be rather long. In the case of our Springer Spaniels Limited site the URL came out to: http://springerspanielslimited.web.officelive.com/.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists

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