BizSugar.com › Technology › Microsoft offers Exchange, SharePoint online to SMBs

Microsoft this week unveiled Microsoft Online Services for companies of all sizes. Previously, and somewhat incongruously, MOS had been available only to companies with 5,000 employees or more. Now, it's out there for the audience that seems most likely to crave it, SMBs.

MOS consists mostly of hosted versions of Exchange and SharePoint servers along with some other features, such as Web conferencing, thrown in. It's an obvious parry to Google's thrust of Google Apps, the online suite of applications the search giant announced last year. But while Google is taking the odd approach of trying to build support for apps among grassroots users and bypassing stodgy IT types, Microsoft seems much more likely to leverage its massive partner network to sell MOS to business decision makers.