@coliver said in Alternatives for Microsoft server products:
@Dashrender said in Alternatives for Microsoft server products:
@coliver said in Alternatives for Microsoft server products:
@Dashrender said in Alternatives for Microsoft server products:
You specifically mentioned SharePoint in your OP. And I read your post in another thread where you said there is no real competitor to SP in the FOSS that you've found so far.
If you really need/want SP functionality - why not go the O365 route? You could move completely away from onsite servers for management if you run all Windows 10 with Azure AD, Intune for GPO management and O365 for SP and email. But I do realize this doesn't give you a FOSS solution, and it's not what I would call cheap either.
As for O365, for the small business market, it appears that they removed SharePoint from the offerings. Team Sites are no longer listed on non E level plans, which means the baseline price is currently $8.00/u/m.
So you have $6/u/m for Intune and $8/u/m for O365 (assuming no local Office) for $14/u/m.
In a 100 user environment, $1,400 a month or $16,800 a year. If you need local Office this is suddenly $33,600/yr (damn that's a huge pile to swallow!)
Huh? That math doesn't seem right.
$6/u/m for Intune and Azure AD = $7,200/year
$12.50/u/m for Office365 with local install rights = $15,000/year
Total = $22,200/Year
Still a bit of money but that includes 1TB/user of online storage, access to Sharepoint, and the added value that O365 brings I don't think you'd be able to do it for much less locally.
I mentioned that I don't think you get SharePoint (team sites) in non E level O365, that's why our prices are different.
You picked $12.50 Business Plan, and I picked E3 for $20. If Team Sites aren't SharePoint, then your price would be correct, assuming that SharePoint is included in Business Plans.
Team sites are, more or less, Sharepoint. I've worked with them in the past and they do have the a lot/most, of the functionality that Sharepoint does. I think the big thing that is "missing" are some of the customization options of the full product.
SharePoint is, well, it's a bit hard to tell. Think of it as a large data pool, maybe a bit like a document-oriented database somehow. You put data into sites, lists and libraries and can filter, link, query and wildcard search that data later. The great point about it: The average user can do that, it's very simple. A user can even build tables with 1:n relationships without knowing much about the process behind. From a developers point of view, you get a user driven database which is accessible via SQL (not really supported) or through a bunch of powerful webservices. You can run any kind of server-side .NET code, clientside JS, integrate into Office. From an admin's perspective, you'll get a searchable document management system that seamlessly integrates into Office, versioning, checkin/checkout, publish/unpublish and a whole bunch more.
On top of that, there's a powerful workflow system with a graphical editor that at least an advanced user can use. For example, I've built a simple vacation system out of a calendar, a bit of JS for coloring and calculation and a background list that holds your current and yearly amount of vacation days. Just click into that calendar and a custom dialog will popup, showing your currently left amount of vacation days and the amount of days you need (with recalculating days needed whenever you chance the start and end date etc). Anyway, there's a approval workflow in the background. When you (as a user) tick the box "approve this" in the dialog and press "OK", the user's manager will receive a mail where he can approve or deny the vacation request. There's more going on in the background, but this should give you a little idea about what SharePoint can do.
So SharePoint CAN be a jack of all trades, website, document management, knowledge base, ticket system, ... whatever you want it to be, it's "just" an application platform.
Teamsites are just a single aspect about SharePoint, some prebuilt functionality.
