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