Microsoft Office Pro 2007 Microsoft chops prices o

Microsoft is cutting prices of its Microsoft-hosted Exchange, also as its suite of enterprise providers (recognized because the Small business Productivity Over the internet Suite,Office Enterprise 2007, or BPOS),Office 2007 Professional, and is also refunding the distinction to existing hosting clients.Microsoft is cutting its Exchange On the net pricing from $10 per person each month to $5 per person per month. Additionally, it is cutting the cost with the BPOS bundle — which includes SharePoint Internet, Exchange On the internet, Communications On the web and Live Meeting — from $15 per consumer per month,Microsoft Office Pro 2007, to $10 per consumer each month.Microsoft is leaving the pricing for its Deskless Worker versions of its hosted On the internet offerings the same. Exchange Online Deskless Worker and SharePoint Via the internet Deskless Worker remain $2 per consumer monthly. The bundle of the two Deskless Worker offerings stays at $3 per user per month.Not surprisingly, Microsoft officials didn;t attribute the price cut to competition from Google Apps or other hosted offerings. Instead, they attributed the cuts to “rapid customer adoption,Windows 7 Discount, global scale and improved efficiencies from new software such as Exchange Server 2010″ (according to the press release).Microsoft is making BPOs available in 15 new countries before the end with the year. Later this week, BPOS will be commercially available in Singapore; trials are slated to begin in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Czech Republic, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Israel, Malaysia, Mexico, Poland, Puerto Rico, Romania and Taiwan. Commercial availability in India can be expected later this year, officials said.Microsoft officials are now claiming to have more than 1 million paying users for Microsoft;s On line family of providers (not counting Live Meeting, for which there are many more paying clients, according to company officials). Newly signed BPOS clients include Hofstra University, Lions Gate Entertainment, McDonald’s Corporation,Office 2010 Sale, Rexel Group, Swedish Red Cross and Tyco Flow Control.Microsoft will be adding a paid, Microsoft-hosted version of Office Net Apps — the Webified versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote– to its On the internet stable next year. Corporation officials have said that paid offering will also be available to Microsoft volume-license buyers so that they can host Office Web Apps themselves, on-premises, instead of or additionally to allowing Microsoft to host it for them. There will be additional (and, as yet, still unannounce) features that will be part with the paid Office Internet Apps offering that aren;t part with the free, ad-funded version.Microsoft is currently rolling out refreshes to its On the web family of providers every 90 days or so, according to Ron Markezich, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft On the net. Some with the new features the corporation is rolling out to its on-premises software — such as Exchange 2010 — are debuting in the hosted, Online offerings before they are available to customers as server-based products. (The final Exchange 2010 software bits are slated to go to consumers starting next week.)I;m sure Microsoft consumers will be upbeat about the cost cuts for Microsoft;s hosted offerings. But I;d think Redmond;s partners who are trying to make money from selling Microsoft;s hosted providers (if not their own hosted version of Microsoft;s wares) might be less enthusiastic…