Microsoft Will Deliver On-Premises SharePoint 2016 This Year
Allaying concerns that Microsoft wasn't planning to develop any more on-premises versions of SharePoint, the company today said a new server release is scheduled for the second half of 2015. Microsoft's emphasis on SharePoint Online had many wondering at times whether the company was planning a new server release, although the company had indicated back in March that a new version was coming.
Despite its push to the cloud version, Microsoft has acknowledged and promoted the fact that organizations' best way to transition is via a hybrid architecture providing connectivity between server and Microsoft's SharePoint Online services. However unlike the on-premises version, the Office 365 version of SharePoint Online doesn't support the trusted code and apps developed for SharePoint Server.
"While we've seen growing demand for SharePoint Online, we recognize that our customers have a range of requirements that make maintaining existing SharePoint Server deployments the right decision for some," said Julia White, general manager for Microsoft's Office Products division in a blog post today. "We remain committed to meeting those needs. We're excited about the next on-premises version of SharePoint and we're sure you will be too. It has been designed, developed and tested with the Microsoft Software as a Service (SaaS) strategy at its core, drawing from SharePoint Online. With this, SharePoint Server 2016 will offer customers enhanced, flexible deployment options, improved reliability and new IT agility, enabled for massive scale."
The company didn't offer any details on what its plans are for SharePoint Server 2016 other than to say it will provide more details at its forthcoming Ignite conference in Chicago in the first week of May, although White insinuated that Microsoft would aim to extend the hybrid capabilities that the current on-premises and cloud versions offer.
"A hybrid SharePoint deployment can provide IT agility by creating a consistent platform spanning datacenters and cloud, simplifying IT and delivering apps and data to users on any device, anywhere," she said. "With SharePoint Server 2016, in addition to delivering rich on-premises capabilities, we're focused on robust hybrid enablement in order to bring more of the Office 365 experiences to our on-premises customers."
Microsoft is already jumpstarting that hybrid effort this year with the rollout of APIs and SDKs that aim to bridge the gap between the on-premises and cloud worlds, as noted in last month's Redmond magazine cover story. The topics to be discussed in sessions at Ingite cover the gamut of SharePoint and Office 365 technologies including Delve, OneDrive, Project, Visio and Yammer.
Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on 02/02/2015 at 7:33 AM