With the Google Chrome OS coming out later this year, “working in the cloud” is becoming a serious option for many private users looking to manage documents, images, and everything else from any computer with internet access.

While this may be an option for the private user, what about the big-money spenders – the businesses? Can cloud computing, like Google Docs, make real time collaboration on documents effortless not only within your own organisation, but also with clients and customers? What about governance, Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, security? Can Google as the more cost-efficient service beat the services SharePoint offers?

As often within the IT industry, the answer is not simply black or white, but rather depends on where you stand.

What Google offers without a doubt is cost efficiency and flexibility. You have documents that everyone has to have editing access to all the time? No problem, simultaneous changes do not even cause a hiccup. You want a site dedicated to your team members without straining your IT budget? Google sites is quickly set up and can be made publicly available or shared with business pals only. It also has the added bonus of offering access from anywhere, anytime and from any device. And, above all, it is so easy that the IT department does not need to get involved.

However, the simplicity has one major price: lack of functionality. It may be argued that hardly anyone fully utilizes or even is aware of all the functionality offered by the Microsoft Office suite – but lack of awareness can hardly be used as an argument for Google. Ultimately, Excel still offers you the ability to publish to SharePoint, effectively creating a real-time, online working environment for all users of a specific site – just as Google Docs is doing. And Excel can do things that Google Docs are not yet ripe to do: it has powerful performance and functionality. You don’t believe me? Try filtering a Google spreadsheet by any specific item, and you will come up short.

Now, with all the effort Google has put into Docs, Sites, and all the other apps they are hosting, it is clear that they are trying to grab a share from Microsoft, especially in the most valuable markets – the market for businesses. They even sneakily advertise it as such, offering team leaders and project managers sites “without the hassle of getting IT involved”.

At the moment, despite everything that they have done, Google cannot convince where large, complex companies are involved. For your small business, consisting of you, your cat, and your neighbour, SharePoint is far too expensive and difficult, and you will do better sticking to the Google environment that comes with an in-built IT department.

But if governance, workflow, and storage of company-owned data on your own, physical servers are further up your list of concerns than saving money or easy information sharing with outsiders – then Microsoft remains unbeaten.