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With SharePoint Workspace, you can sync data from Office 365 SharePoint Online for offline access. Although this will require additional setup time. From $6.30 per licence per month.

The biggest feature of Office 365 that is not available with Google Apps would be Microsoft Office. Because Office 365 replicates many of the features found on on-premises versions of Microsoft Office, documents can move from the cloud to the desktop and back without losing formatting. For companies that use complicated documents, this becomes extremely important.

Office 365 compensates for the lack of collaboration within documents via an online whiteboard session using its Lync Online service. With Lync Online, you can share and collaborate in real time on any item on your desktop From $3.20 per licence per month.

Costs considerably more than google

Office Web Apps utilize a three step approach before they can be edited anywhere through a web browser. One must: Create the initial documents in Office 2010 (on a desktop or laptop). Upload them through Office 365’s Sharepoint Online interface. Once uploaded, they can be accessed by given users through Office Web Apps. “Google can create in one step online”

For an extra From $26.90 per licence per month, Office 365 users can also get the license to download the desktop Office 2010 Professional suite. This path is significantly more costly than the Web-only options. It adds functionality lacking in the Office Web Apps, though, and it lets users be productive even in the absence of an Internet connection.

That $252 per user per year for Office 365 is a short-term savings. Office 365 will cost more when that amount adds up to $504 over two years, whereas the Office 2010 Professional suite has a street price of $410. The value of moving to the cloud depends on how long you plan to use the Office 2010 suite before upgrading, and how much value you will get from having the added functionality of the desktop suite.

No costs for less than 10 users

Google Apps made a name for itself with collaboration. Google Docs provides a real-time collaboration feature where multiple users can be editing a single document at the same time. Each collaborator can actually see the edits of others in real time. Office 365 simply provides a check-in/check-out approach to team collaboration. Additionally, Google Docs users can have a real-time instant message chat conversation within the context of their document

Google Apps is the best value. The annual pricing of $72 per user for business grade support per year makes it about a third less per user per year than Office 365, yet it delivers equivalent functionality sufficient for most small and medium-size organizations.

Google Apps, with its Box.net integration, can provide 5GB more data storage capacity.

Short video – Google explains how it integrates collaboration into office

Google has gone to great lengths to improve fidelity with Microsoft Office. Google Apps can capably open and work with Microsoft Office file formats, but many features–such as tables of contents, footnotes, or inserted images–end up being reformatted in Google terms, and they remain that way when you revert to the native Microsoft Office software. Within Office 365, you won’t necessarily be able to insert or edit many of the advanced formatting features from the desktop Office programs–such as footnotes, headers, or a table of contents–but you can view them, and at least they won’t screw up.

Using google apps to replace your exchange server is a viable option, your mail will be accessible through mobile devices and have access to the power of large corporation security and maintenance. Your calendars will be synchronised by your devices and outlook. Contacts are synchronised with your devices native methods and are shared via the web interface of gmail, which is an amazingly powerful and usable web app.

The prices in this document may be subject to change

Definition of Usability

Usability is a quality attribute that assesses how easy user interfaces are to use. The word “usability” also refers to methods for improving ease-of-use during the design process. Usability is defined by 5 quality components:

• Learnability: How easy is it for users to accomplish basic tasks the first time they encounter the design?Efficiency: Once users have learned the design, how quickly can they perform tasks?
• Memorability: When users return to the design after a period of not using it, how easily can they re-establish proficiency?
• Errors: How many errors do users make, how severe are these errors, and how easily can they recover from the errors?
• Satisfaction: How pleasant is it to use the design?

Functional refers to the design’s utility: Like a tool, does it do what users need?

Usability and function are equally important and together determine whether something is useful: It matters little that something is easy if it’s not what you want. It’s also no good if the system can hypothetically do what you want, but you can’t make it happen because the user interface is too difficult. To study a design’s functionality, you can use the same user research methods that improve usability.

Why Usability is Important

On the Web, usability is a necessary condition for survival.

• If a website is difficult to use,
• If users get lost on a website,
• If the homepage fails to clearly state what a company offers and what users can do on the site and
• If a website’s information is hard to read or doesn’t answer users’ key questions

People leave.

There are plenty of other websites available; leaving is the first line of defense when users encounter a difficulty.

The first law of e-commerce is that if users cannot find the product, they cannot buy it either.

Time users waste being lost on your intranet or pondering difficult instructions is money you waste by paying them to be at work without getting work done.

For internal design projects, increasing usability is cutting training budgets and productivity. For external designs, increasing sales, registered users or customer leads, or other desired goals motivating your design project.

How to Improve Usability

There are many methods for studying usability, but the most basic and useful is user testing. Here is the Usability framework that we use and suggest designers / developers use for a quick evaluation of your next website project.