Microsoft is very pleased with the demand for the service and has plans to take it out of beta at the end of 2006.  "We are super excited about the positive reaction and demand from our customers," said Baris Cetinok, director of product management and marketing for Office Live at Microsoft, in an interview with Ipwalk.

Ipwalk, which has tracked the growth of Office Live since the start of the beta in February, said that Microsoft had initially used a wait list to restrict the influx of new users, only sending out a limited amount of product keys every week. Another factor that had limited user numbers was that the Office Live beta was only available to US residents.

"When Microsoft removed the wait list early in April, registrations went up significantly," IPWalk said. Ipwalk reported in May that Office Live was rapidly catching up with the Yahoo! equivalent.

A graph and an Excel file showing the growth of Microsoft Office Live are available here.  

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