In today's information economy, companies realize more than ever that people are their most important asset. Companies also understand that having a communication and collaboration solution that helps their people work better together is essential. Finding the right solution, however, can be a challenge. Communications technologies change quickly. Security concerns are rampant. And company IT resources may be spread thin.

That’s why many organizations today are turning to Microsoft SharePoint® Online ¹. SharePoint Online provides a single, integrated location where employees can efficiently collaborate with team members, find organizational resources, search for information, manage content and workflow, and leverage business insight to make better-informed decisions. Based on Office SharePoint Server 2007, this Microsoft-hosted solution enables employees to easily create and manage custom team and project-focused sites for collaboration, including security-enhanced document sharing. Users get the flexibility and customization they need to truly work efficiently across teams. Microsoft handles setup, provisioning, ongoing maintenance and upgrades of your Office SharePoint Server infrastructure. This reduces the IT workload and frees your IT staff to work on core strategic initiatives that can help move your business forward.

How it Works

SharePoint Online leverages redundant and geographically dispersed data centers. Each data center houses a reliable infrastructure needed to support the service. SharePoint Online helps simplify IT management by removing a company's need to deploy, configure, monitor and update/upgrade a collaboration solution on premises. From the Microsoft Online Administration Center, service administrators can create new site collections and sites, and enable access to specific users. With SharePoint Online, your enterprise can be up and running quickly with the tools your users need to communicate and collaborate effectively.

SharePoint Online offers you a comprehensive set of functionality spread across the Portal, Collaboration, Search, Content Management and Business Process and Forms workloads. Key features include:

· Shared document and meeting workspaces

· Content management features for documents and Web content

· Document libraries with version control

· Seamless integration with Microsoft Office 2007 and Office SharePoint Designer

· Standard templates including wikis, blogs, and surveys

· E-mail alerts when documents or other items have been changed or added to a site

· RSS feeds for SharePoint libraries and lists

· Low-cost user licenses for "deskless workers" who use a PC on a limited basis

· Language support for English, French, German, Spanish, and Japanese

· Use of HTTPS to help keep Internet access secure

· Antivirus scanning with Microsoft Forefront™ Security for SharePoint

· Sign In application that provides single sign-on capability

· 99.9% scheduled uptime with financially backed Service Level Agreements

· Web form and 24/7 phone-based Tier 2 support for IT administrators

Migration

Many customers have existing collaborative platforms or older versions of SharePoint Server.  C2C can help you develop a strategy for migration to SharePoint Online.

¹ This document describes the Microsoft SharePoint Online Standard offering only.