SharePoint 2010: A More Viable Cloud Option

March 2nd, 2010

Rob Koplowitz

With contributors:

Christopher Voce , Sara Burnes

Summary

Cloud-based software solutions have become an increasingly viable alternative to on-premise solutions for many organizations. In fact, 24% of respondents in Forrester's Enterprise And SMB Software Survey, North America And Europe, Q4 2009, showed a strong preference for software-as-a-service over on-premise deployment. The option of avoiding the hassles of an on-premise SharePoint implementation altogether and going straight to the cloud can be intriguing. The problem to date has been that cloud-based SharePoint, either standalone or as part of Microsoft's Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) has had significant limitations when compared to an on-premise implementation. SharePoint 2010 closes the gap in functionality between the deployment options and opens up SharePoint Online to a wider range of applications — but for some, it still won't completely wipe out the need for on-premise SharePoint infrastructure.

Want to read the full report?

This report is available for individual purchase ($1495).

Forrester helps business and technology leaders use customer obsession to accelerate growth. That means empowering you to put the customer at the center of everything you do: your leadership strategy, and operations. Becoming a customer-obsessed organization requires change — it requires being bold. We give business and technology leaders the confidence to put bold into action, shaping and guiding how to navigate today's unprecedented change in order to succeed.