SharePoint Online and Server Timelines

SharePoint Online is a cloud service that provides team collaboration, corporate portal hosting, enterprise search, and content management. An on-premises product, SharePoint Server, offers many of the same features, and current versions can work in a hybrid deployment with SharePoint Online to share information.

Roadmaps: SharePoint Online Roadmap and SharePoint Server Roadmap

Products: SharePoint Online and SharePoint Server

SharePoint servicing varies between the cloud service and on-premises server products. Fig. 1 shows major feature releases and retirements as well as the life cycle for the on-premises server products.

SharePoint Online

The cloud service is updated continually by Microsoft. Customers can generally turn off preview features, but after functionality is generally available, the features are released to all customers, usually over a rollout period of a month or more.

SharePoint On-Premises

The on-premises server product is installed and managed by the customer with updates applied on their schedule, although failing to apply certain updates can negate support.