Office 365 + Sharepoint + ??

[jmak]

OK, so I've already got my dunce's cap on. I have a cold and feel rotten, but I think the real problem is I'm just being thick...

 

I want to set up a trial of Office 365 and the main purpose is to share documents for staff working off-site and add some resilience to our single server set-up.

 

I don't need to set up the email, as we already have Exchange and OWA supplied by County within the package we subscribe to. We have Office 2010 pro plus, which includes Sharepoint on all of the clients and the A2 plan includes Sharepoint.

 

So (at the minute) my questions are:

 

Do I need to install Sharepoint on my file server and if so will Sharepoint Foundation do? I'd like to synchronise between what is held in Office 365 and what's on the local server, to mitigate against internet access failure.

 

For personal documents, do the users use Sharepoint through Office, or map their "My Documents" to the Skydrive Pro account? And if I do that, do I stop using offline files?

 

(Final Question) Should I pick a random domain name for my trial, or choose the one I'd like to end up with? I've read confilicting views as to whether I can migrate data from the trial to the live system.

 

Thanks in advance

 

PS: I'm running Server 2008 r2 and 100% Win 7 Pro clients with Office 2010 Pro plus (not in a desperate hurry to go Office 2013 at the minute)

[Michael]

You don't need to install SharePoint locally, but in the longterm if you wish to synchronise data then yes you will.

 

You can use your real domain name and create a TXT record to confirm domain ownership. This won't affect your e-mail services or anything else that uses the domain. Alternatively, use the built in *.onmicrosoftonline.com domain when signing up to Office 365.

[jmak]

Thank you (Thanks button not appearing for me at the moment)

 

Will the (free?) Sharepoint Foundation be enough, or do I need to budget for a licence?