Advisory - Office 365: SharePoint Online Review

• 2012-08-14
• Shawn Shell
  with
  Tony Byrne

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Office 365 is Microsoft’s most important business-centric cloud offering. Office 365 is a suite of products that includes:

•  Exchange for email
• Lync for instance communication (including VoIP, screen sharing, and instant messaging)
• SharePoint for collaboration
• A local copy of Office (i.e., Word, PowerPoint, Excel, etc.)

Of the four major products, SharePoint is truly the crown jewel for enterprise customers, and is referenced in standalone form as “SharePoint Online.” 

SharePoint Online exhibits most of the pros and cons of its on-premise cousin, but also brings its own quirks and benefits, some as a result of its hosted architecture, and others are specific to the way the platform has evolved.  This analysis explores where SharePoint Online differs from the on-premise version, and how to evaluate the platform accordingly.