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Whether you call it hosted SharePoint or SharePoint in the cloud, you need to be aware of this growing trend in the SharePoint arena. HostForLIFE.eu, as the premier European ASP.NET and Windows SharePoint Hosting provider, has offered SharePoint Service on a Cloud Server.

HostForLIFE.eu is Microsoft No #1 Recommended Windows and ASP.NET Hosting in European Continent. Our service is ranked the highest top #1 spot in several European countries, such as: Germany, Italy, Netherlands, France, Belgium, United Kingdom, Sweden, Finland, Switzerland and many top European countries. Click here for more information

Here are some FAQs to get you started.

1. What is the cloud?

“The cloud” is a trendy catch phrase that means different things to different people. Wikipedia’s basic definition is useful: “Cloud computing is Internet-based computing, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices on demand, like the electricity grid.” DevPro Connections magazine author Tim Huckaby further demystifies the cloud: “It’s an economic model in its infancy.”

2. What is the payment model?

One model involves paying for what you used (i.e., a utility). Another model involves paying for what you say you’ll use (i.e., a subscription).

3. How is Microsoft involved in hosted SharePoint?

Business Productivity Online Services (BPOS) is a suite of Microsoft products delivered as a subscription service. Within that suite is SharePoint Online. You can get it as a dedicated solution, where you’re the sole party using the service, or you can get it as a multi-tenant solution, where you share the SharePoint service with many other companies.

4. Who is looking at a hosted strategy?

EMC analyst Matthew Roberts says small and medium-sized businesses: “They just don’t have the budget to deploy and manage SharePoint because they might need a developer skill set, an admin skill set—plus there are issues of upkeep, archiving, replication.” Although large companies are exploring the space, he says, many are choosing a hybrid approach, “putting commodity teams to SharePoint Online, but the apps and data associated with them are on-premises.”

BPOS in particular has proven attractive to large organizations, according to Rob Koplowitz, principal analyst in content and collaboration with Forrester Research. He cites large, multi-national pharmaceutical companies that have been early adopters.

5. What are the pros and cons of hosted SharePoint?

For every concern voiced about hosted SharePoint, such as security, someone else can offer a counter argument, from cost savings to easier management to business continuity in the face of outages or disasters. Ultimately it depends, as most decisions in IT do, on the needs and particular situation of an organization. As food for thought, here are what some industry experts told us:

Pros: “I actually like it because it forces you to build very clean applications by the rules,” says Dave Chennault, an MCTS in SharePoint and BPA. (See his article in the November issue of SharePointPro Connections magazine, coming out the last week in October, “POV: IT Pro,”  about hosted SharePoint considerations.) BPOS “is supportable by anyone who knows SharePoint and frees you from custom code and being shackled to the developer who wrote the custom code.”

“A lot of organizations are still fairly early in deployment of SharePoint so you can start with that dynamic of ‘can someone else do this for me?’ In that regard, it might be more simple to move to the cloud,” says Rob Koplowitz.

Cons: “There are a few reasons why you might not want to use a ‘cloud’—some technical (like BPOS does not allow you to easily add third-party applications to your SharePoint environment) but most around governance, security, and compliance,” says Kevin Laahs, a strategist with HP. “You are basically handing over your service to someone else—are you sure they will take as good care of your service as you would yourself?”

About HostForLIFE.eu

HostForLIFE.eu was established to cater to an under-served market in the hosting industry; web hosting for customers who want excellent service. This is why HostForLIFE continues to prosper throughout the web hosting industry’s maturation process.

HostForLIFE.eu is Microsoft No #1 Recommended Windows and ASP.NET Hosting in European Continent. Our service is ranked the highest top #1 spot in several European countries, such as: Germany, Italy, Netherlands, France, Belgium, United Kingdom, Sweden, Finland, Switzerland and many top European countries.

As a leading small to mid-sized business web hosting provider, we strive to offer the most technologically advanced hosting solutions available to our customers across the world. Security, reliability, and performance are at the core of our hosting operations to ensure each site and/or application hosted on our servers is highly secured and performs at optimum level. Unlike other web hosting companies, we do not overload our servers.

We believe in our customers — customers are at the core of what we do! And as such, all of our R&D efforts are done with voice of the customer in mind; our support team is courteous and friendly and will do whatever it takes to assist and resolve your support tickets