Business and enterprise software, and other applications that help a business run

We have written several columns lately about business applications such as office suites built to be used remotely, on your browser (here,  here, and here). Google is the clears winner so far in such offerings. Microsoft is still attempting to catch up and is planning the release of a new group of on-line office-oriented application.

Strictly speaking the new offering will not be very new, as it will actually be a combination of Office Live Workspaces, Windows Live One-Care, Windows Live, and MS Office applications. There is apparently a beta of this new mix of products going on right now. There is a retail component to this new offering, which would seem to be contrary to its purpose, although it may be just the off-line component of a mainly on-line product.

The rumors about this product are as confusing as they are edifying. If it is supposed to be a computing-in-the-cloud product, why is there a significant component to run on your computer? Perhaps the intent is to be able to work both online and offline and have the ability to synch the files from both ends.  Or, more likely, Microsoft itself is confused about how to tackle this marketplace and is just very busy running all the flags it has up all the flagpoles it can find.