Microsoft's Strategy for Small Businesses (B): Marketing MS Office Live

While some experts hailed this ad campaign as innovative, others felt that the ad could be intrusive and thus a source of annoyance to the visitor. Experts' opinions were also divided on the Office Live offering. When Office Live had been launched as beta, it had disappointed many experts when they realized that Office Live was not a hosted version of the MS Office applications, as the name seemed to suggest. They felt that extending the Office brand to Office Live was unwarranted and a branding misstep. Some analysts said that much should not be read into the 'free' offer made by Microsoft, as they felt that it was a ploy by Microsoft to win over new customers for its software and services.

Through the launch of Office Live, Microsoft's increased focus on the small business software market had become evident. Earlier, in October 2006, Microsoft had launched two new accounting software packages for small and medium businesses (SMBs) - Microsoft Office Accounting Express 2007 (OAE 2007) and Microsoft Office Accounting Professional 2007 (OAP 2007).

Microsoft saw this as a major growth opportunity because a large portion of the market had remained untapped by technology vendors. Schultz agreed that Microsoft was indeed making a huge strategic push in the SMBs segment.