Boston, MA / London October 31, 2012 -- Microsoft’s SharePoint cloud offering, part of Office 365, does not co-exist easily with existing on-premise installations, and should be considered primarily for “greenfield” environments, according to research released this week by The Real Story Group, an independent analyst firm (https://www.realstorygroup.com/Advisory/Download/145/Advisory-Office-365:-SharePoint-Online-Review).

“SharePoint Online shares most of the benefits and drawbacks of its on-premise cousin, but with one key twist,” notes Real Story Group founder, Tony Byrne.  “It doesn’t play nicely with the on-premise version.”

Real Story Group research identifies challenges with integrating search services, activity streams, permissions, workflows, and other services across on-premise and cloud SharePoint environments.

“SharePoint in the cloud could work well for those use cases where you want to roll out isolated applications, or you manage a small business starting from scratch in a greenfield scenario,” says RSG Senior Analyst Apoorv Durga.  “But enterprises should remain wary of Redmond’s claim that incumbent environments can co-exist smoothly or migrate easily to the cloud,” Durga adds.

Real Story Group produces research about SharePoint to help enterprises determine which applications SharePoint should be used for. For more information on the SharePoint research, click here, and download a free sample of our SharePoint evaluations.