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The company plans to charge corporate customers a monthly subscription of $15 per user for a suite of hosted software, which includes e-mail, web meeting, collaboration and messaging applications running on Microsoft's servers.

Microsoft Online Services is part of the software maker's effort to capitalise on the shift by corporate customers to abandon their own in-house computer systems for 'cloud computing'.

"We're seeing customers, partners and even competitors embrace this flexible approach to the cloud," says Stephen Elop, president of Microsoft's business division.

Microsoft says it's signed a number of new online services customers including Nokia and Danish shipping and oil group AP Moeller Maersk.

The company's software suite

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is priced at $180 a year for each subscriber while rival Google's competing product, Google Apps, which comes with e-mail, messaging and document sharing, costs around $50 a year per user.

Microsoft argues that its offerings are more advanced than Google Apps. Technology administrators can manage Microsoft Online Services' accounts in the same way they deal with accounts of users running on their own computer systems.

Microsoft also says it will share 18% of the subscription fees with companies that bring in new customers to the online service suite in the first year, and 6% each year over the life of the contract.

By employing a revenue-sharing model, Microsoft says it can probably add more customers than it could alone and it could encourage other companies to build applications to work with its online services.

The company has also introduced Deskless Worker Suite, which includes stripped-down online versions of its Outlook e-mail application and SharePoint collaboration software for $3 a month per user.

The software suite is targeted at workers such as nurses and factory employees who have traditionally not been given e-mail accounts or other forms of productivity software. By offering a low-cost product that can be accessed through a web browser, Microsoft believes it can broaden its base of users.