Microsoft is currently extremely offensive on their new cloud services targeted to consumers and business users with their Live services. I use a number of them daily with the Live Mesh as the newest addition.
A couple of months back I started to move my and my family's documents to Skydrive, 5Gb free online storage, and I’ve made some efforts to get started with the Office Live Workspace, to have a better place work working with the documents. Then Live Mesh came into the picture, and it lets me automatically sync documents between our PC’s and cell phones – really awesome!
All of these three services are really good, but currently none of them is perfect, and the problem is that they do not work together at all. Below is a comparison of some of the features. All three services can be accessed from a standard browser and has features for sharing files and documents with other people.
| | Live Mesh | Skydrive | Office Live |
| |  |  |  |
| Storage Space | 5Gb | 5Gb (25Gb announced) | 500Mb |
| API (i.e. programmable) | Yes | No | No |
| Synchronization with workstations | Yes | No | No |
| Calendars | No* | No* | Yes |
| Custom lists | No | No | Yes |
| Remote Desktop access | Yes | No | No** |
| Office integration | No*** | No | Yes (plugin) |
| Mobile devices support | Yes**** | No | No |
| Office Live applications integration | No | Yes***** | No |
| Office file previews | No | No | Yes |
| Office Live 14 support ****** | No | No | Yes |
* You have the feature in other Windows Live applications
** SharedView is used instead
*** If the folder is synchronized with the local PC, then an update to the Office document is synced into the Mesh instantly
**** Currently in a limited closed beta
**** Integration with Office Live Photo Gallery announced
****** Currently not available
As you can see there are several features that do not overlap.
What I would like to see is some kind of merge or collaboration between of these three services.
Imagine having 25Gb online storage of which you can have parts synchronized with different machines and full integration with the Microsoft Office suite (or other Office-like suites for that matter).
I did pop this question to one of the Microsofties at the Live booth at the PDC a few weeks ago, and the reply was that there were no plans of this. I think this is really bad. Yes I understand that they are three different services but I think that the underlying storage should be the same and that some of (if not all) the features above should be available in all three of them. If it would become true, this would truly be a powerful service that no one can neglect to use.
Then just add some subscription to this and let’s say that you can have 100Gb online storage, then I would for sure place all my data and images up there in the cloud.
Do you use any of these services and what do you think?
