You Need SharePoint 2016. Here’s Why.

Day Two of SharePoint | Office 365 Symposium and Day One of LegalSEC Summit – both are going great. With the inclusion of Office 365 this year and hybrid advancements to SharePoint, attendee engagement and enthusiasm is apparent.

Each new version of SharePoint has made substantial steps forward and the SharePoint 2016 release is no exception. SharePoint 2016 represents the sixth major release of the product. Microsoft’s commitment to SharePoint has been questionable until just recently. Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, expressed his intentions to invest heavily in the product and shared a sound vision and road map for a healthy future; this road map included another on-prem version of SharePoint. SharePoint 2016 delivers a true hybrid experience – a testament to Microsoft’s commitment to customer needs, especially in highly regulated industries such as legal.

With three years in the making and a heavy investment, it is no surprise SharePoint 2016 offers major advancements. Here are 70+ reasons to migrate to SharePoint 2016:

(Go ahead. Grab your coffee. I’ll wait…)

The improvements to SharePoint 2016 deliver incredible business value with its hybrid possibilities and new collaboration tools. With this being said, like any release, there is always room for improvement in some areas. At a high level, I will highlight the benefits and those areas of weakness:

INFRASTRUCTURE:

• Overall this is a rock solid release from an infrastructure perspective
• Project Server is now packaged with SharePoint
• Zero Downtime Patching allows administrators to deploy updates without taking down the farm
• Microsoft has built some traffic management or “load balancing” capabilities into the product
• You can tell that it’s been put through its paces in the cloud
• Addition of the Health Analyzer

However…

• MinRole configurations were built with big farms in mind
• Excel Services being re-sku’d to OOS is a bummer
• User analytics could be stronger

USER EXPERIENCE:

• Because 2016 is a branch off the O365 code base there is some overlap from a UI perspective
• This includes the app launcher – otherwise known as the waffle
• SharePoint as a DMS has gotten a lot stronger, but it’s still not adequate for legal
• Addition of modern attachments (link vs. attachment)
• Mobile views with improved touch experience with a phone form factor

However…

• Mobile views are not responsive (yet)
• The mobile picture is stronger, but there is room for improvement
• Preview and eDiscovery for external content could be stronger

HYBRID:

• Major new hybrid features include Compliance Center, eDiscovery, DLP, Extranet, B2B Sharing, Team Sites, Search, App Launcher, Scenario Picker
• OOTB Search Center, plus any and all tailored search experiences
• External content surfaces in Delve via Office Graph

However…

• SaaS service will have less control and extensibility
• Set of features unavailable with Cloud SSA/O365 index
• No query-side “hook” for extensibility

Sean Coleman, CCO at BA Insight, and I presented this material yesterday afternoon, SharePoint 2016: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. While this presentation focuses largely on the on-prem version, the line is constantly shifting and being blurred between on-prem and online. For a comprehensive overview of SharePoint 2016 including what’s new, what’s deprecated and what’s coming, please contact [email protected].

The presentation will be available soon.