I came across a nice review of SharePoint Online by NSI Partners, who are using it themselves. They were looking for a file sharing and document manager solution for their geographically dispersed organization. Sifting through the dozens of solutions out there, they decided upon SharePoint Online for the following reasons:-

1) Backup - The fact that Microsoft backs up all the data stored within SharePoint Online. 

2) Beyond file storage - SharePoint Online offers features much beyond simple file storage, and allows users to create custom sites, workspaces, manage calendars, forums etc. All these can serve an important purpose in distributed teamwork.

3) Presence Awareness - Presence awareness features allow SharePoint Online users to see if other users have signed in to one of the other Microsoft Online products - Communicator, Outlook, LiveMeeting etc. They can initiate instant messaging sessions with signed in users. 

4) Versioning and comments - File collaboration includes versioning and commenting features. This helps teams keep track of document changes and have conversations around each file. 

5) Works with MS Office - SharePoint Online mainly allows collaboration on traditional filetypes such MS Word, PowerPoint etc. SharePoint Online is ideal for companies which word in an MS Office context (such as NSI partners). 

In all fairness, there are many online collaboration software or alternatives to SharePoint Online which offer the above features. But Microsoft's visibility, and trust with enterprises works in its favor.

First of all, many thanks to Bob Hooker, from whom I have borrowed this article. His article does a shorthand review of what SharePoint 2010 is like right out of the box.

SharePoint 2007 Dressed as FaceBook

The new UI conveys the impression of SharePoint 2007 trying to look more like Facebook or Flickr. The new UI used the latest standard AJAX and Web 2.0 style interfaces to appeal to modern workers. This means there is little additional learning for people who are familiar with SharePoint 2007, and new users will find SharePoint 2010 easier to use because of its upgraded design.  

SharePoint 2010 is an official SharePoint version which has dropped support for IE 6, and will only run on versions above that and also need JavaScript. This gives you the ability to add, out of the box, is a lot more user functions. In line editing adds a lot. But things like calculated fields are just as ugly as ever.

Beyond the UI

Beyond the UI there is not too much new to SharePoint 2010. More records management features have been added up front like holds and locations. But overall, the logic and limitations of earlier versions of SharePoint lists remain, and can be similarly frustrating. The new ribbon control makes it much easier to find the SharePoint features. 

With AJAX, web 2.0 style interface and integration with Office Web Apps, SharePoint 2010 is also a lot more amenable for web use.

The choice is yours - SharePoint 2010, SharePoint Online or an online SharePoint 2010 alternative. 

Its almost a month since Sharepoint 2010 was launched in a much publicized event. Microsoft underlined its commitment to the cloud and new social and collaborative technologies during the event keynote. As the product is new, and real information on it minimal, only time will tell how cloud friendly it is.

But here are some indicators. One would naturally have assumed that SharePoint Online, the web version of SharePoint would be put on a SharePoint 2010 backend. But that is not the case. SharePoint 2010 remains on SharePoint 2007, and it wont be until the end of the year before it is migrated to SharePoint 2010. Rather than tech glitches, MS claims the delay has more to do with transitioning billing systems. I wonder.

Secondly, to be able to access Office Web Apps, especially in a business context, you either have to have a paid Microsoft Live Services subscription, or a SharePoint 2010 installed. Contrast this with Google Doc's (Google's online office suite and document manager)recent demo tool, where you can give it a spin without so much as a registration. Not very cloud friendly is it?

Users always have the option of web native alternatives to SharePoint 2010, if theyr'e really looking for a cloud friendly collaboration software.  

SharePoint 2010 was finally launched by Microsoft a couple of days ago, after having been in beta for over 5 months. There was much debate around the software, even before it was launched. It is seen as a major improvement over its predecessor, SharePoint 2007, with much stronger social features (social networking, tagging) in tune with the changing paradigm of business software.

Some have even gone so far as to call it "FaceBook for grownups", or "business alternative to FaceBook". I am in personal disagreement with this statement, since part of the reason FaceBook  has become so massively popular is that any user can perform any function. In other words its compelling design and simplicity of use. I do not see SharePoint 2010 relicating the same simplicity.

On the other end, Forrester came out with the conclusion that "SharePoint 2010" may be overkill for companies which need basic features, namely small enterprises. These companies are better served by alternatives to SharePoint 2010, which bring robust functionality, which can easily be accessed by users in a "point and click" design. 

With the announcement of Microsoft's latest editions of its enterprise software just around the corner, the tech media is abuzz with Google Apps vs. Microsoft debates. And it is not only now, the media has been obsessed with Google vs. Microsoft for a few years now.

With Google's web based productivity approach has certainly made a dent in the Microsoft dominated enterprise productivity market, psychological if not actual (Google's actual paid enterprise customers are not that large in number). It is primarily for that reason that Microsoft, and the other leader in the enterprise productivity market - IBM, have been scampering to web enable their traditional on premise products. Resulting in Microsoft BPOS, SharePoint Online, Exchange Online, Office Web Apps, IBM LotusLive and many other products. 

In the meantime, Google in equal measure has been upgrading Google Apps constantly. All this has fueled perpetual debates of MS vs. Google that would leave your ears ringing with MS vs. Google even when you're asleep. 

All this talk creates a myopic view of an either or market, where customers have just two choices - Microsoft or Google. A tech oligopoly. But it couldn't be farther from the truth. There are dozens of segments in the market which are not served best by either Google or Microsoft products. It forgets about the solutions which are better than both Google and Microsoft's products in many areas. 

It fails to acknowledge solutions like Zoho, HyperOffice and many others which identified the potential of software as a service for the business market much before either Google or Microsoft.