As a SharePoint SME @ Mentor Graphics I am often asked to make comparisons between SP and other tools such as Twiki, Drupal, Google Docs, etc. Our environment @ Mentor is an exciting mixture of Windows and *nix users - which lends to some special collaboration challenges. That said, I embrace any opportunity to learn about new collaboration offerings, with a goal (in my mind) of being able to provide our internal customers solutions to their problems as opposed to being married to a single tool.

Accordingly, I am excited to have an opportunity to get in on the ground floor checking out Google Sites in our environment and get my straight Google Sites to SharePoint comparison on.

The first thing I must say is that of course the AD authentication aspect of SharePoint is invaluable, being able to manage permissions in that way and have seamless login using our network credentials is a huge plus in our SP environment. That said, having to have a separate username and password for Google Sites is a major drawback.

So my first initial impression, while totes simplistic, is absolutely 100% applicable and fully important: the entry point into Google Sites is easy peasy. Any Google Apps user in our environment can, if they so choose, create a Google Site. One Click - and bang: GoogleSite=Wow.

Create New Site
Behold the Google Sites new site page - of course considerably lighter than the new site creation page in SharePoint ... it makes having a collaboration site extremely accessible for Google Sites users.



Now, our whole approach to SharePoint is completely different then what it would probably be for Google Sites ... SP is a managed IT service, while the content and site/subsite mgmt is done by those site owners, the original creation of a top level SP site is done by the root site admin (me - woot). That said, before I create a new top-level site I engage with the requester to ensure that they receive the appropriate training and will adhere to our SP guidelines and site owner responsibilities. I need to gather information on their initial requested permissions, whether they want to be crawled by Enterprise Search, and get their agreement to represent their organization on the SP Technical Advisory Board (STAB). All in all, the creation process from start to finish could take up to 2 weeks ... but it definitely won't take under 3 days. soooo ... easy peasy entry point ... first observation o' angirankin re: google sites v. sharepoint.

boototheyah.