Just Like SharePoint

Office 365 beta accounts seem to be like gold dust inside Microsoft. When, during a meeting about something different, a colleague realised I had access to the beta, she instantly demanded I show her what it looks like.

So, once I’d found my log-in credentials (a long email address as a log-in is the one annoyance so far, possibly a side effect of how our beta accounts were assigned) I went straight into SharePoint Online.

“That looks just like SharePoint.”

I resisted the urge to give a patronising, “Yes, that’s the point.”

I think that’s probably the best praise for this cloud solution. Someone, looking at it for the first time, couldn’t see the difference between SharePoint Online and the SharePoint on-premise that we’re used to using. The functionality and business benefits that people can experience through SharePoint Server 2010 are out there as a cloud solution, ready to be consumed from anywhere with an internet connection.

I showed the editing experience, the lists and libraries, and other familiar features of SharePoint and my colleague agreed that she wouldn’t have known she was looking at a cloud solution. This means that users can get the same rich experience in Office 365 and as they would with a server deployment.

So if you want to know what SharePoint Online is like, remember this: It looks just like SharePoint.