Would You Trust Microsoft to Back Up Your Personal Files?

Slowly but surely, Microsoft is rolling out the hosted services for small-business customers that CEO Steve Ballmer outlined vaguely this summer.

In July, Ballmer sent his annual letter to Microsoft employees. In it, he mentioned that the MSN, Windows and Office teams have been working together on a number of Microsoft-branded, hosted services for small businesses. The services would help "smaller businesses and consumers to enhance security, lower costs, and improve the end-user experience in areas such as communication, collaboration and desktop management," Ballmer told employees. Ballmer and other Microsoft execs hinted earlier this year that a blogging service, a personal information management service and security service(s) would be among the stable of the new hosted IT services.

And over the past two months, word seeped out about two of these services: MSNSpaces, Microsoft's new blogging service that went to beta this month; and Microsoft Office Outlook Live, the soon-to-be-unveiled e-mail service that uses Hotmail as its back end.

But Microsoft is working on yet another hosted IT service that has yet to get ink, according to sources close to the company.