Microsoft SharePoint 2016 is due for release in a few months, so you there is a good chance you may be asking yourself “Should I move to SharePoint 2016?”
You have the option of sticking with your older version of the software, at least for a while, but depending on your situation you might find that SharePoint 2016 offers important benefits for you. Read on to learn the pros and cons of migrating to SharePoint 2016, and how to make the best decision for your organization.
Why Should You Move to SharePoint 2016
The key benefits of SharePoint 2016 are simple – increased scalability and stability. SharePoint 2016 is an extremely robust platform, which is very useful for large organizations. It’s also easy to scale SharePoint 2016 to manage large volumes of data. Moreover, SharePoint 2016 is a great tool for organizations that are serious about creating a hybrid environment, as it has much-improved support for combining cloud and on-premises systems, as compared to previous versions of SharePoint.
Why You Shouldn’t Move to SharePoint 2016
Even with its increased scalability and stability, there are two key reasons not to make the move to SharePoint 2016. They are time and money.
Any migration has an associated cost. In addition to requiring employees to spend time handling the data and content migration, there is also a labor cost associated with training users to bring them up to speed with the new system. In light of these costs, you may wonder whether migrating to SharePoint 2016 is worth it – a serious consideration for any organization, as this new version of SharePoint, is not radically different from those that came before it.
How to Make the Best Decision
If you are not sure whether migrating to SharePoint 2016 is right for your organization, download the beta, so you take a test drive of SharePoint 2016’s key features for yourself. Getting a sneak preview of SharePoint 2016 before its official release should help you to decide whether it is a good solution for you. However, it should be noted the beta is not a final product; the beta cannot be upgraded to the RTM version of SharePoint 2016, which should be officially released sometime next spring.
If you’d rather not take advantage of the beta, you can wait until SharePoint 2016 is officially released to make your decision. At that point, you will be able to read reports from companies that have already made the move and learn from their experiences. Many businesses choose to wait a year or two after a new SharePoint release before they make the move to the new version, as the delay allows enough time to see whether the new release is stable and whether it offers big enough benefits to justify the disruption of making the migration.
Before you decide whether to migrate to SharePoint 2016, consider whether you want to connect to the cloud, as well as how you want to make this connection. SharePoint 2016 facilitates hybrid cloud solutions, but setting up a connection to the cloud still takes time and effort. In particular, evaluate which documents you need to keep on-premises and which ones could migrate to the cloud.
Careful planning can make migration to SharePoint 2016 much faster and more straightforward, should you choose to make the move in the future.
Final Thought
The choice over whether to move to SharePoint 2016 is a big decision, with pros and cons on both sides. But no matter what you choose to do for your organization, you should still be excited for the new release, as it represents an important step towards a stable solution for combining cloud and on-premises data.
