SharePoint Roadmap Leads to Office 365

Office 365 and other Microsoft-hosted services are taking over many tasks currently handled by SharePoint Server on-premises, and are signaling the end of some SharePoint technologies. Organizations interested in deploying Microsoft’s planned new capabilities for collaboration, compliance, business intelligence, and other areas will need to move some on-premises SharePoint functionality to SharePoint Online in Office 365 and migrate off some existing SharePoint technologies to other hosted services. Consequently, organizations might want to limit technical and licensing investments in SharePoint Server on-premises until Microsoft reveals more of its plans, which should begin in May 2015.

Roles Being Handed Off to Office 365 and Power BI

SharePoint development at Microsoft is now driven by the needs of Microsoft-hosted services, especially Office 365, a line of subscription plans that delivers Microsoft-hosted SharePoint (SharePoint Online) with Exchange, Office, and other services and client software. Recently, several Microsoft-hosted services have appeared that are not SharePoint components, although they address traditional SharePoint tasks and sometimes use SharePoint technology. Many of the services require the Office 365 E1, E3, or E4 enterprise suites or other subscriptions. (See the illustration “Office 365 Suites for Enterprises“.)