With its recently released "Information Worker Suite", has Microsoft finally realized the dream the small to mid sized business owner has long harbored? An integrated product addressing all of a business' compelling IT needs - hosted exchange for email setup, and shared calendars, tasks and contacts; hosted Sharepoint for collaborative workspaces and document management and LiveMeeting for web conferencing, all rolled together beautifully in the "Information Worker Suite". No need to ever look elsewhere; no need for hardware, software downloads, implementation or maintenance; and all at an imminently affordable $15. Might not your eyes brim over? Might not you be choked with emotion?

Snap out of it.

For all that Microsoft may seem to offer, its product is none of that. For one, it is not an integrated all in one product. It's the same old bare bones hosted Exchange, hosted Sharepoint and LiveMeeting, offered at a joint pricing. Not a ready to use, all in one product. That means implementation that YOU have to do. Don't want to handle three separate products? Well, its integration that YOU have to perform. Isn’t that what small to mid sized business were running away from all along?

So is there no hope?

There has been hope all along. Just open your eyes and look around. Smaller companies who have matured working for small to mid sized businesses have been offering such a dream solution for years. A great example is HyperOffice. It’s been marketing itself as a Sharepoint and Exchange alternative for years.

HyperOffice is web based (no hardware or software downloads) and includes email setup, shared contacts/calendars/tasks, document management, intranet/extranet publishing, forums, Outlook integration, desktop integration, mobile access, chat and much more; all rolled into one, accessible from a single, easy to use console.

The only allegation that could have been leveled against them is that they did not offer web conferencing. Well, not any more. They recently launched their web conferencing tool, well integrated with the rest of the suite.

Next time Microsoft paints glorious pictures, don’t fall for it.