SharePoint Will Be More Integrated with Office 365

SharePoint Online is being integrated more closely with Office 365 and Azure Active Directory (AAD), and several of the service’s features are being revamped to rely on Office 365 Groups and Office Delve. These features will eventually be integrated with SharePoint Server (the on-premises SharePoint collaboration software implementation) by way of a feature pack, a rollup of new features similar to a service pack, in 2017. However, the on-premises implementation of these new features could require hybrid deployments or additional subscriptions for full functionality, and proper licensing of on-premises deployments remains unclear.

SharePoint Features Will Require Office 365 and/or AAD Premium

The SharePoint Online feature set roughly matched that of SharePoint Server 2016 when the on-premises version was released in May 2016. Since then, SharePoint Online has begun to receive new and updated features, many of which are integrated with Office 365 and AAD. They could eventually impact the on-premises SharePoint Server.