It can get a bit confusing when you start to unravel what Sharepoint 2010 looks like as a cloud offering.
Perhaps it’s due to the fact that Sharepoint 2010 is not cloud ready.
As Information Week pointed out today, Microsoft hardly gave a nod to cloud computing in its launch that took place on the Saturday Night Live set at NBC Studios.
It’s surprising, especially considering the deep commitment that Microsoft says it is making to cloud computing.
Information Week’s Doug Henschen points out that Microsoft’s cloud-oriented bundling of Exchange Online and Sharepoint Online never came up today:
“But the Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) — Microsoft’s cloud-oriented bundling of Exchange Online and SharePoint Online, never came up. “Perhaps that’s because SharePoint 2010 won’t show up as part of BPOS until later this year. Microsoft says BPOS-D will bow by year end; but that’s not hard given that “D” simply means that its conventional Exchange and SharePoint hosted on dedicated hardware. BPOS-S, the true Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offering, will only reach beta by year end, so look toward mid 2011 for broad availability. Competitors have pounced on the differences between Microsoft’s on-premise and cloud offerings. ‘ “
Confusing, isn’t it? But it gets even more contradictory when Microsoft executives say that Sharepoint 2010 is truly a multi-tenant service with its only delay being the roll out of Microsoft’s provisioning and online billing systems.
But it really is not multi-tenant ready. According to Information week, a number of functions are handled at the server level or at the SharePoint Farm level.
The goal is to make Sharepoint Online identical to the Sharepoint on-premise offering launched today.
But it looks like it may be some time before we see that true transparency.
