Microsoft Launches Office 365 Cloud Suite 200
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft took its cloud suite Office 365 out of beta today and the opinion mongers are in overdrive. Is Office 365 missing features, is it too complex, or should it be taken seriously? And how does it stack up against Google Apps?"
Sharepoint 2010 - Core of the Business Web Apps (Score:5, Interesting)
We adopted MSFT's big-brand business suite, SharePoint 2010, several months before it launched last May. It took a full 6 months to set up the environment, plus additional time to make it even remotely useful for the enterprise. The level of in-house expertise and infrastructure needed to make a business run on MSFT products (Outlook, SharePoint, etc) is obscene.
And it's quickly becoming outdated, sorry MSFT.
At another business (I switched, thankfully!), we use Google Enterprise. The level of support we need to provide for e-mail and document collaboration is radically lower and feels fundamentally different. Instead of FIGHTING with our systems to keep them online, we can innovate and develop new and cool things because our time doesn't disappear into the black hole of "Correlation ID errors" and arcane Outlook glitches.
MSFT, I hope you learn what it means to provide cloud services, and do provide a worthy competitor to Google and other providers! Then, we'd have some exciting innovation! In the meantime, pah... sorry guys. I know you work VERY hard. But PLEASE tell Ballmer to step aside so you can do something that isn't designed by the Corporate Committee!
Re:We use it here (Score:3, Interesting)
What is it adding over Google apps in your case? It seems to me that if you want to reliably migrate away from MS infrastructure that would be more of a step in the right direction, wouldn't it? Won't your marketing people miss man of the top end features of powerpoint in any case?
Well, we did try out google apps. I like it, but I got overruled :)
The main complaints with google apps -
No Lync
No web app versions of Word, Excel, etc ( I'll admit, I like having this option, since I cannot install them and sometimes OO/LO doesn't cut it)
My main complaints against 365 -
Google apps is cheaper, and accomplishes most everything we did before with a local Exchange deployment
It's Microsoft
People might start putting data into the lockbox that is Sharepoint. It's a nightmare migrating data out of there, and we had been down that road before.
Ribbon? (Score:4, Interesting)
Does it have the horrible ribbon thing that the newer versions of Office have? If so, I think it will have a hard time catching on (I tried that "See How it Works" link on their site but they wanted me to install Silverlight). No one I know took OOo or Symphony seriously until MS came out with the ribbon interface. It was at that point they felt the need to see what type of competition was out there.
Re:Ribbon? (Score:3, Interesting)
Or I could just avoid Office like the plague whenever possible, as I've always done. Unfortunately, my boss doesn't let me get away with avoiding it completely, but he doesn't realize I use Symphony 90% of the time (damn you Excel spreadsheets!).
The last thing I want to do is spend my time learning where the icons are on a MS interface. I could be doing important things, like trolling Slashdot.
Re:Sharepoint 2010 - Core of the Business Web Apps (Score:2, Interesting)
We adopted MSFT's big-brand business suite, SharePoint 2010, several months before it launched last May. It took a full 6 months to set up the environment, plus additional time to make it even remotely useful for the enterprise. The level of in-house expertise and infrastructure needed to make a business run on MSFT products (Outlook, SharePoint, etc) is obscene.
And it's quickly becoming outdated, sorry MSFT.
At another business (I switched, thankfully!), we use Google Enterprise. The level of support we need to provide for e-mail and document collaboration is radically lower and feels fundamentally different. Instead of FIGHTING with our systems to keep them online, we can innovate and develop new and cool things because our time doesn't disappear into the black hole of "Correlation ID errors" and arcane Outlook glitches.
MSFT, I hope you learn what it means to provide cloud services, and do provide a worthy competitor to Google and other providers! Then, we'd have some exciting innovation! In the meantime, pah... sorry guys. I know you work VERY hard. But PLEASE tell Ballmer to step aside so you can do something that isn't designed by the Corporate Committee!
We had the same experience with Sharepoint. We embraced it wholly, too, amidst the shitstorm of try to get to work right. When we finally got fed up with weekly expensive calls back to Redmond, we got sucker punched when we discovered the back end database structure is an opaque nightmare and Sharepoint was essentially holding our data hostage. We won't touch sharepoint again, and I have heard similar experiences from other companies in my area.
Re:Will it work with none MS or Apple systems? (Score:3, Interesting)
I seriously doubt it. ANd if it does, my bet is that it will fail within 2 years.
I work in an organization where my department is all Linux, and the rest of the company is Windows XP or 7. Moving to Office 365 for me has been a benefit, actually, because with the exception of Lync I can access all the web versions of the apps using Iceweasel/Firefox in my linux machine. As far as Apple goes, I hear there is a web version of Lync you can use because Apple can run Silverlight. So, if like me you are all FOSS, the only thing you are missing out on is Lync.
Re:We use it here (Score:2, Interesting)
Abreu doesn't have the slightest idea... his exposure to Exchange and Outlook in a corporate environment is basically nill, and so the best he can come up with is a one-liner slam of all things "M$".
I took a brief trip through his posting history, and the bulk of it is non-technical, and overall mostly one or two line comments responding to non-technical articles.
He doesn't have the slightest idea how to help you: His post is a knee-jerk reaction to a question that he doesn't understand.
However, if you're really looking to migrate away from an existing Exchange infrastructue, the PST approach is probably best - there are PST to converters available for many platforms.
My opinion? Our company isn't going to migrate from Exchange any time soon, and most especially not to the "cloud", and here's why:
Our existing Exchange infrastructure is completely satisfactory for our current corporate needs. However, being proactive, we are planning to virtualize it soon: We have the VM servers in place already, and the transition from discrete physical servers to VM's will be transparent, and our existing SANthat already hosts our Exchange data is more than adequate.
And why not move to "the cloud"? Sorry, but we're a 24/7 shop, already set up for such... and we've no need, nor desire, to offload that to anyone outside our company, and so risk losing control of it.
Sharepoint is a EDM and Workflow Engine (Score:5, Interesting)
If you're comparing Sharepoint with Google Docs, I'm not sure you fully understand what Sharepoint brings to the table.
I'm actually wrapping up a Sharepoint 2010 installation this month. It's on time and budget. The company now has their entire Workflow process, including custom C# workflow/document rules that were developed specifically for their needs.
Google Docs and Sharepoints are not even similar products. If you can go with either for your needs, then by all means go with Google Docs. Because that means you're really not using Sharepoint properly.
Re:Will it work with none MS or Apple systems? (Score:5, Interesting)