Microsoft "super excited" as Office Live passes 100,000 users

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 06 July 2006 18:31

Your IT - Home IT

According to Internet statistics company, Ipwalk, Microsoft Office Live, Microsoft's web hosting, email and collaboration service for small businesses has accumulated more than 100,000 users since its beta launched in February this year, despite several factors limiting the amount of users that have been able to join.

Microsoft is very pleased with the demand for the service and has plans to take it out of beta at the end of 2006.  "We are super excited about the positive reaction and demand from our customers," said Baris Cetinok, director of product management and marketing for Office Live at Microsoft, in an interview with Ipwalk.

Ipwalk, which has tracked the growth of Office Live since the start of the beta in February, said that Microsoft had initially used a wait list to restrict the influx of new users, only sending out a limited amount of product keys every week. Another factor that had limited user numbers was that the Office Live beta was only available to US residents.

"When Microsoft removed the wait list early in April, registrations went up significantly," IPWalk said. Ipwalk reported in May that Office Live was rapidly catching up with the Yahoo! equivalent.

A graph and an Excel file showing the growth of Microsoft Office Live are available here.