I had the pleasure of sitting down with Cynthia Bates, General Manager of U.S. Small Business for Microsoft at the recently completed World Partner Conference in Denver.

When you meet face to face with the real folks trapped inside a mega brand like Microsoft, you come to appreciate how hard these companies really are working to provide success tools for small businesses. I don’t know that they always get it right, but when I meet people,. like Cindy Bates, who genuinely seem to care about small business I take note.

Here are a couple pretty useful things Microsoft is doing for small business
• Microsoft Small Business Center – growing collection of resources including over 50 webinars from folks like Rieva Lesonsky, editor of Entrepreneur and Guy Kawasaki, author of Art of the Start. These are archived from the Small Business Summit program initiated last March. I’m told plans are under way for a repeat performance. You can also find small business IT specialists and technology events by zip code.
• Microsoft Start-up Center – Great interactive content for start-ups. Features my buddies the Sloan Brothers of StartUpNation.

Much of the product coming under the heading of Office Live is focused on small business. In fact, they tell me the real focus is businesses with less than 50 employees. Smart move. I also met with some of the Office Live team and will have some coverage around that and AdCenter in future posts.