SharePoint On Trial

Wherever you look these days people are trying to save money. My own football club, Aston Villa, are no exception with American owner, Randy Learner, tightening the purse strings. The Villa manager has been told he needs to reduce the wage bill before we can buy anymore players. Many companies are putting a block on any new spending. So projects which were in the pipeline are now being shelved. This has meant that a number of companies, both in the ‘Private Sector’ and ‘Public Sector’, have postponed SharePoint Projects. Even though long term SharePoint would offer considerable savings to these organisations it is the initial project costs that are making them think twice.

In English football, unless you are Manchester ‘Moneybags’ City, you have to watch how much you are spending. Sometimes it is better to use the loan system and take a player on loan for a few months to see if he is really going to improve your team. It is even possible to share the cost of the wages with the club he plays for as they are just keen to reduce their wage bill. If only there was a way of loaning SharePoint!

Perhaps Hosted SharePoint could offer a short term answer. Hosted SharePoint can be a way to try SharePoint out in your organisation without having to make any major investment and also without affecting your current computer environment. The advantage is that you can experiment with SharePoint and see how you could use it to streamline some of your business processes. If you only want to try it for a handful of users the monthly prices of Hosted SharePoint can be very cheap. It would probably cost less than replacing the toner in one of your laser printers.

There are so many companies worldwide offering Hosted SharePoint that it can be confusing knowing which one to choose. Although, as long as you are not paying too much each month and there isn’t any long tie-ins it doesn’t really matter which one you chose. Mind you, I would get in trouble at work if I didn’t mention the Office Talk Hosted SharePoint offering ‘Office Manager’. We even offer a one month free trial (pity some teams don’t do this with players Villa are interested in) and include over ten useful pre-configured department sites. Visit http://www.office-talk.com/index.php?id=159 to try it for free.

So don’t let lack of money stop you trying out SharePoint because you will soon discover the many ways it could start to save your organisation money. Or you might after trying it decide it isn’t for you.

Now, I wonder if Liverpool would loan Villa Steven Gerrard for the next eight months.

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