Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office
We saw a recent announcement about ‘Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office' with the following underlying features.

Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office brings collaborative multi-person editing to the familiar Microsoft Office experience. You can share, backup, and simultaneously edit Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Excel documents with coworkers.

There are several articles out already with the point of view that ‘Cloud Connect' is a Microsoft SharePoint alternative in the Office Collaboration space. There is even a comparison chart available.

While Google Cloud Connect seems like it would be a useful feature for a smaller group of individuals, academics and to a large extent enterprises in certain scenarios such as an Onsite/Offshore model, in terms of the collaboration needs of the large enterprises,Microsoft SharePoint and its latest incarnations on the cloud provide a wide array of features that can't be matched by Google Cloud Connect as per the current offering details.

Office 365 and SharePoint Online
Microsoft Office 365 delivers the power of cloud productivity to businesses of all sizes, helping to save time, money and free up valued resources. Office 365 combines the familiar Office desktop suite with cloud-based versions of next-generation communications and collaboration services: Exchange Online, SharePoint Online and Lync Online.

This suite also touts of the following benefits:

• Anywhere-access to email, documents, contacts, and calendars on nearly any device*
• Work seamlessly with Microsoft Office and the other programs your users already count on everyday

Cloud Collaboration Service for Enterprises
While ‘Google Cloud Connect' provides an important feature - shared editing of Microsoft office documents - we find an enterprise Collaboration service is much more than shared editing Microsoft Office documents. The following are the current key features in SharePoint 2010 that makes it extremely useful for enterprises. The underlying assumption is also that SharePoint Online as part of Office 365 will carry the existing features of SharePoint 2010 such as the data centers.

Business Connectivity Services (BCS)
It's clear that the enterprise data exists beyond Microsoft Office and hence an enterprise wide collaboration tool should serve as a common access place for multiple kinds of enterprise data across disparate systems. The Business Connectivity Services (BCS) allows enterprise data to be exposed as web parts for users.

Business Connectivity Services (BCS) in SharePoint 2010 is all about connecting to external data. BCS enhances the SharePoint platform's capabilities with out-of-box features, services and tools that streamline development of solutions with deep integration of external data and services.

We find that BCS connects to several enterprise applications such as SAP, MS-Dynamics, Siebel, and reporting tools like Cognos. BCS can also be extended to Cloud-based offerings sych as SQL Azure, SQL Azure Reporting Services, which makes collaboration more meaningful as the business users need to have access to the information across the enterprise for effective collaboration.

For example, a sales lead for the product would like to query the Warranty Report stored in the back-end databases and based on the defect details, he may assign a particular task to a design engineer, such scenarios will be more meaningful with the BCS.

Business Intelligence / Dashboards / KPI
SharePoint is traditionally built on portal and dashboards that provide options for users for data analytics on the enterprise data. The dashboards can be created from multiple data sources. Key performance indicators (KPIs) can be defined from a variety of sources, including Excel Services, SharePoint Lists and SQL Server Analysis (SQL Azure) Services.

• ETL, OLAP, data mining and reporting capabilities
• Excel Services and Sql Server Analysis Services
• KPI lists
• Dashboards
• Performance Point Services

All of the above features of SharePoint 2010 and likely to be part of SharePoint Online makes it a much broader tool for enterprise collaboration.

Workflow
Enterprise collaboration associated with the critical business processes are more than editing a document simultaneously by two remote users, but they need to have a defined process flow with human intervention at appropriate points with clearly defined roles and responsibilities. This can only be facilitated by a strong workflow engine as built inside SharePoint.

The integration of Windows Workflow Foundation (WWF) into SharePoint services allows developers to create workflows and attach them to various SharePoint objects. Also out-of-the-box workflow features are available with many predefined conditions to satisfy common business scenarios.

Some of the out-of-the-box workflows are:

• Collect Feedback
• Verification
• Approval Review
• Approval

Assuming your network is running Server 2008 Active Directory on-premises, you can configure Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) to achieve single sign-on, so that users can log on to the domain and be automatically authenticated to Office 365. Integration with enterprise directories makes the workflow in SharePoint Online use the actual hierarchies in the organization for approval and escalation scenarios.

Unified Communication
As we have seen, modern day enterprises cut across continents, and the communication features of SharePoint enable teams to collaborate using workspaces and other tools.

Lync Online provides intuitive communications capabilities across presence, instant messaging, audio/video calling and a rich online meeting experience including PC-audio, video and web conferencing. Transform your interactions with colleagues, customers and partners from today's hit-and-miss communication to a more collaborative, engaging, and effective experience.

• Connect with others through Lync contact photos, activity update feed and interactive contact card in Microsoft Office
• Move easily from instant messaging into ad-hoc online meetings including audio, video and screen sharing with just a few mouse clicks
• Conduct online presentations to customers and colleagues including audio, video, screen sharing and a virtual whiteboard

Summary
Most of the materials on the web suggest the new Google Cloud Connect as a cheap alternative to the Microsoft Collaboration platform, which may fit into the needs of very specific scenarios of document sharing.

However, as explained in few points above, Enterprise Collaboration requires many more features than the ability to edit and view documents at the same time over the Cloud.

While this feature from Google can be a complimentary to Enterprise Collaboration at this time we find Microsoft's proposed Cloud offering on Office 365 with SharePoint Online provides a real option for enterprises at this time.

• Google Finds Another Way to Tick Off Microsoft
• The Future of Productivity in the Cloud
• Google Cloud Connect Office – Taking Microsoft Office into Google’s cloud.