What are the differences between Sharepoint 2010 vs Sharepoint Online/Office 365

Question

We are going to work with Office 365 solution, and Sharepoint Online. But before that, we want to know the differences between Sharepoint Online and Sharepoint 2010.

I searched for these, and I've found this excellent blog article. Is that hard to integrate own add-on ?

I've found this answer in stackoverflow that leads me here, but it does not answer the question.

May I have your opinion ?

Answer 1

The current version of Office 365 is based on SharePoint 2010. The next release of Office 365 will be based on SharePoint 2013.

There is little difference per se between Office 365 and SharePoint 2010. What you are actually comparing is hosted multi-tenant SharePoint (Office 365 belongs to this category) vs. having your own SharePoint application.

I'd recommend to search the Web for "SharePoint multi-tenant" for more details.

Answer 2

You may want to check out the following resources:

Office 365 and SharePoint 2010 Online Guide for On-Premise SharePoint Professionals http://nikspatel.wordpress.com/2012/04/09/office-365-and-sharepoint-online-guide-and-resources-for-sharepoint-on-premise-architects/

Comparing features in SharePoint Online across Office 365 Service Plans http://blogs.technet.com/b/lystavlen/archive/2012/05/10/comparing-features-in-sharepoint-online-across-office-365-service-plans.aspx

Cheers, John

Answer 3

The other articles seem to do a good job addressing the main differences. As to your question regarding "add-ons", the issue is with farm vs sandbox solutions. Farm solutions can do essentially anything within sharepoint They have full access to the object model, and with one line of code the developer can have functions run as the app pool user. (So, if the current user accesses a page with a custom web part, that web part can do things that the user does not have permission to do.) Sandbox apps have access to a restricted piece of the API. Sandbox apps can access resources within the site collection they're running in, but can't access resources outside the site collection. Also, that one line of code isn't available. Sandbox apps can't just elevate their permissions and run as a service account.

So, it's "simple" to create a sandbox app. But, most existing apps aren't sandbox apps, so most won't work. Oh, and sandbox apps have been deprecated. So don't start building new ones. Instead, look into SharePoint "Apps": http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/office/apps/jj163230(v=office.15)