Office Live: Threat to Hosters?

As I see more and more information regarding the Office Live announcement from Microsoft, I'm starting to ask myself if, as an architect for a large hosting company, if we're making a serious mistake in pushing Microsoft technologies. If Microsoft, as this quote from TechCrunch indicates:

"The core tools are a free non-microsoft domain name, website and up to 50 email accounts with 2 GB of storage each. Rajesh created a new website in the demo, adding content and images, in a minute or so. For a small company needing a informational website, it will be great. Given that the domain name, website building, hosting and email will all be free, this will be very attractive to a small business."
(http://www.techcrunch.com/2005/11/02/office-live-will-be-huge-productivity-tool/)

is beginning to move into our space (again), then why should we be building products on top of the Microsoft stack? What incentives do small to large service providers have for continuing with our Microsoft products? Should we start focusing more of our resources on building better and better unix-based products? I've been a strong propenent of hosted Microsoft solutions at many companies, but now I'm questioning that course of thinking. Part of me hopes this effort goes the way of bCentral, but I have a feeling it won't -- there appears to be a heavy focus on software as a service, etc., so the momentum is there to make this succeed. Will other hosters be able to host the Offive Live solution? Should we allow Microsoft through our doors when they try and sell us on the Microsoft Solution for Windows-based Hosting?

Other news articles indicate that Microsoft will be doing hosted CRM, hosted Exchange, hosted Sharepoint, etc.. See my del.icio.us feed for articles that reflect that.

One concernI have is that Microsoft will push other Microsoft web hosts out of the market by being able to offer cheaper hosting. That's the beauty when you don't need to worry about license fees. Will we see a change in the SPLA to make it worth our while to continue pushing Microsoft technologies.

-matt
http://del.icio.us/baldwinmathew/mshostingwatch

Re: Office Live: Threat to Hosters?

Was wondering the same thing.

I keep getting partner emails about Office Live and frankly I'm flummoxed.