Should You Use Office 365 SharePoint Online?

There's no doubt that the world, Microsoft included, is moving more toward the "cloud." However, while cloud solutions offer a great number of advantages, they also have limitations and potential downfalls. We'll take a look at those advantages and disadvantages with Microsoft Office 365 and the cloud-based SharePoint Online.

Pros:

• You reduce your cost. Since you no longer have to run and maintain your service, you could save a substantial amount each month.
• Microsoft keeps your privacy in-tact by allowing you to create group-facing intranet pages.
• The new design has several areas of improvement, especially when it comes to Silverlight visuals.
• Employees can share and access group documents even more easily, from wherever they are.

Cons:

• You lose control. While you may be paying less for the maintenance of your servers, they're also no longer your servers.
• You can't implement farm-level solutions; absolutely everything has to be made in the sandbox.
• Your entire staff will face a learning curve as they migrate to the new system.
• Microsoft's servers aren't completely free from errors. Earlier this year, their BPOS system went down for over a day.

Do the pros outweigh the cons? That really depends on where you're coming from. For many groups, the decreased cost is well worth sacrificing a bit of control and learning to use the sandbox for site customization. For others, however, their current version of SharePoint resolves all their needs with ease and facing the new learning curve and potential problems is an unnecessary hassle.

Regardless of what you choose, SharePoint Engine can help you do it right. Give us a call today for a free consultation discussing how we can work together.