In-Depth
Sharepoint in the Cloud: Cloud Collaboration
SharePoint is tailor-made for the cloud, providing location and device independence.
In the early days of SharePoint, IT found strange new apps popping up all over, and eventually was asked to manage them. Now the vast majority of shops have some SharePoint installed. Many of these apps were installed guerrilla-style, and most of them are purely tactical. They have to go up quickly and sometimes come down just as fast.
This is a big burden on IT pros because they often must drop everything to keep pace. They have to secure the licenses, make sure they have ample server and network resources, get the app up and running, define and enable the end-user access rights, set up security and storage ... all of this for an app that might last mere months and serve a tiny team.
Help from the Cloud
The cloud doesn't take this entire burden away; IT pros must still define and form the app. But cloud can remove most of the infrastructure grunt work. And IT may save cash in the process.
By running SharePoint in the cloud, organizations can also do away with fixed costs and capital expense items, including licenses, hardware and server networking (though WANs should be boosted to handle cloud traffic).
SharePoint is tailor-made for the cloud. After all, the collaboration software provides shared access with location and device independence.
SharePoint Pros
For many SharePoint hosters, SharePoint is all they do. They have the infrastructure, security, storage and expertise in place to instantly handle new apps. All of this should be elastic enough to handle your company's needs as you grow. And because the hosters are the experts in all of this, you don't have to be.
About the Author
Doug Barney is editor in chief of Redmond magazine and the VP, editorial director of Redmond Media Group.