A set of countries outside of the USA now has access to trial Microsoft BPOS for 30 days (for free) before the official launch. Ireland has the launch even on April 2nd. Business Productivity Online Suite is a part of the new Microsoft online services.
The sign up process was pretty simple. It ties to a MS Passport. You then create user accounts in a simple admin portal. You can email activations and passwords to the new users. This is not based on Passport which is perfect. If you have a domain you can tie it to your service – it must be validated to prove that you own the domain name you enter.
In the trial I set up Exchange (limited because I don’t have a domain), SharePoint and Live Meeting. SharePoint runs really fast on my ADSL line. SharePoint allow you to set up sites in your collection using the different default templates. You can customise the sites to a limited extent. LiveMeeting integrates nicely with the admin portal.
Each user can install a desktop client for automatic sign-in into BPOS. This gives them links into each of the services. It’ll also auto-configure their Outlook to connect to the hosted Exchange service. There’s a link to fire up LiveMeeting.
If you haven’t used LiveMeeting then here’s the short story: It’s a conferencing tool. It allows video and audio. You can schedule events (sets up calendar entry in Outlook) or just do an impromptu session where people are sent an email with a URL and password.
I see BPOS as being an alternative solution to Small Business Server for anyone who doesn’t need the customisation or needs physical control of the data locally. It’s also a good branch office solution – you can integrate it with your Active Directory or with your Exchange infrastructure.
I’m impressed so far.