One of the more potent applications in both Office 365 and Google Apps is their intranet application. Microsoft’s offers TeamSite ─ hosted SharePoint; and Google’s, typical of their imaginative naming conventions ─ “Sites”. These apps differ fundamentally from standard web development environments in two ways. 1) In addition to text and graphics, SharePoint and Sites offer the ability to “easily” share the content generated by the other applications in their respective suites such as documents, calendars, contact lists, etc. 2) These apps are “easy” to use that you don’t need to hire a web developer to build your own business intranet site. On the first point, both platforms succeed. On the second point… not so much.
And where do I get my free instance of Sharepoint?
My brother-in-law’s family motto was, “If it’s free, we need it!” which brought me to Sites.
Free for 30 days (same as Google)… http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/free-office365-trial-si.aspx?WT.srch=1&WT.mc_id=PS_google_Office+365_Entice_office%20365_Text#fbid=cCqp6lMtjxH
You guys sure slithered out of there quietly tonight.