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I believe the Google/AWS based solutions are for sure the cheapest and most customizeable. For this solution you'd need a considerable level of knowledge for developing your customized environment.
If you have the budget, and want to have less internal activity (even if it is still required to have the needed knowledge for the maintenance and the day-by-day evolution), then you can look at out-of-the-box solutions.
The most professional (I think) is the IBM based modular Lotus suite, starting with the Domino Mail and Calendar server, Notes rich client (it's an eclipse/AppServer based client with tabs, palettes, views, and many customizable functionalities like widgets, gadgets, etc.), that allows you to integrate ALL your desktop/web apps in a single window. Then you can add other functionalities such as instant messaging and videoconferencing with Sametime, team collaboration and content management with Quickr, enterprise intranet solutions with Mashups, workflow and performance Dashboards, mobile support with EasySync, social tools integrated in Lotus Connections such as Profiles to find people based on their expertise and responsibilities, Communities to share info with others, Dogear to save and share bookmarks, Activities to organize your projects and involve others as well, Blogs (no explanation required). EVERYTHING integrated.
If you need less and want to spend less, there are other solutions like the Novell Teaming & Conferencing.
Then, you can find OpenSource based solutions that require a subscription fee for the non-basic versions like Zimbra, iSense from nextgroupware, IGSuite.
Or, if you want, you can choose from a list of FREE OpenSource solutions like eGroupware, MoreGroupware, Epiware, Kolab, Horde, etc.
The difference: the less you pay, the less you get in terms of out-of-the-bos functionalities, but they are ALL customizable anyway.

Hope this helps.

posted September 2, 2008

It really depends on the resources you have available to your company. That is both money and talent.

I personally use the Google Platform as I call it very heavily. Because of the low cost and the customization that is possible. We can take advantage of the GData back-end, API Infrastructure, and IGoogle Dashboard Interface...then with JavaScript / OpenSocial we can build anything we want on top.

Then we heavily use Amazon Web Services for more of the heavy lifting for processing power, jobs, and storage.

We also replicate / backup all the data from GData to Amazon S3 infrastructure for safe keeping.

There are so many differences between all the cloud platforms and I personally kept coming back to Google / Amazon WS because of the cost, ease of implementation, and infinite scalability to handle any size of project / campaign.

Links:

• http://www.socialmediasquad.com
• http://www.kinlane.com

posted September 1, 2008