Microsoft shuts Office Live Small Business

Microsoft has shut down Office Live Small Business, the hosted website creation and business email platform that has since been superseded by Office 365.

Office 365 took over from Office Live Small Business (OLSB), Live@edu and BPOS in late 2010. Microsoft said months ago that OLSB would close at the end of April, and this has indeed taken place, with access to OLSB services and sites built using the service being closed off on Tuesday.

OLSB was part of Microsoft's old cloud collaboration strategy and was accompanied as such by Office Live Workspace, which has since been replaced by SkyDrive. The small business product came out in 2008 as a package of several existing Office Live services that dated back to 2006.

Office 365 takes over much of the same functionality, offering collaboration, professional email, security and communications tools. Microsoft has since February been offering OLSB customers a free six-month trial of Office 365, along with a guide for moving over to the new platform.

The company also offers a form that owners of decommissioned OLSB sites can use to access their information on a temporary basis.

However, despite the warnings, people were still using forums to complain about migration issues as late as Monday.