What’s new in SharePoint Server 2016

In spite of the success of cloud infrastructure and the popularity of O365, Microsoft is planning to launch an on premise SharePoint Server by the end of the year. According to Microsoft, they are mindful that there are a lot of enterprises across the world who continue to use the on-premises version of SharePoint. In the new release, Microsoft has incorporated some key enhancements and new capabilities that will allow customers to choose from a combination of on-premises, cloud, or hybrid deployment for their business. SharePoint 2016 will help organizations modernize their on-premises deployments and take advantage of cloud innovation, improving speed and agility while enabling new user experiences.

With the new SharePoint, Microsoft is looking to bring together all experiences across the various Office technologies, and consequently maintain core capabilities around IT and development. SharePoint Server 2016’s design takes inspiration from the cloud, and allows organizations to benefit from it on their own terms. Organizations can improve performance and reliability of operations by enabling hybrid scenarios that enrich the existing on-premises investments. It will bring cloud innovation to the data center and in doing so, facilitate speed and productivity for users and flexibility and control for IT.

The all new SharePoint Server 2016 also guarantees data loss prevention. A broad array of features and capabilities are designed to ensure critical information is protected across on-premises and cloud systems. Strict data encryption has been incorporate to offer a wide range of compliance tools for O365, ensuring that content usage abides by corporate policy.

SharePoint 2016 will help organizations make faster decisions by providing users access to information on the go. Some of the additional features that will result in improved user experiences are listed below:

1. Enhanced Search: Using Office Graph and Delve, users can speedily access relevant content stored through on-premises and cloud environments. Furthermore, it will provide users with predictive search capabilities.
2. Mobile: Users will be able to access SharePoint Server 2016 on their mobile phones, enabling superior touch-based experiences across various hand-held devices.
3. People Centric: File storage and document collaboration will be more people centric; users can get personalized insights based on their requirements. With OneDrive, users can easily store, sync, and share their files across devices.
4. Collaborative: SharePoint 2016 is set to be more collaborative, bringing teams together and facilitating enhanced communication.
5. Cross-Suite: Users will experience a seamless experience across O365 with value-added collaboration.
6. Advanced O365: Innovations in Office 365 will enable improved user experiences and capabilities allowing users to choose between an on-premises deployment or through a combination of SharePoint Server 2016 and O365.
7. Ready-to-go Portals: SharePoint 2016 will offer incredibly rich and attractive portals that are not only intelligent but also social, mobile, and ready to go. It will allow users to build portals instantaneously and have them up and running in minutes. These portals will leverage Office Graph to deliver personalized information to users.
8. Social Integration: SharePoint 2016 will have richer integration with Exchange and Yammer, facilitating improved communication and collaboration. It will integrate social interactions from Yammer to enable contribution and support easy access on mobile phones. For enhanced social capabilities, SharePoint 2016 will also integrate Yammer with Office documents, Dynamics CRM, and Salesforce.com to help users work in new and dynamic ways.
9. O365 Video: SharePoint 2016 will broaden access and management of new types of media through integration with O365. It will allow users to upload, store, share, and discover videos anywhere and anytime.
10. Better Interface: SharePoint 2016 is set to have a better user interface that eliminates clutter and offers users a responsive, user-friendly design. Users will now also be able to publish content easily, thus increasing efficiency and productivity.
11. Patch Enhancements: To ease the process of patch management, SharePoint 2016 comes with a new server role installation wizard that reduces the number of patches and also ensures minimum downtime.

Conclusion

With every new release, Microsoft is developing innovative and novel ways to improve employee collaboration and communication. However, since a lot of companies continue to work on the on-premises model, Microsoft will continue to build and evolve the on-premises version of SharePoint. With new user experiences and the power of O365, SharePoint 2016 is set to develop and improve user experiences across departments and technologies. 

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