Friday, November 11, 2016

SharePoint On-Premise or Office365?

Summary

Many organizations currently rely on their on-premise SharePoint systems for hosting public websites, intranet and workflow applications, and document management.   For some organizations, a cloud-based SharePoint installation could provide significant cost savings and workload streamlining, could reduce downtime, and improve the organization's overall IT agility, while it may be unsuitable for others to support customizations, integration and other unique needs.  

Problem

Microsoft Corporation has not publicly announced new features or enhancements beyond 2015-2016 time frames for SharePoint on-premise environments while asserting that the best experience and innovation will occur in the cloud (Gartner, 2014). This also brings into question if the gap between SharePoint on-premise and SharePoint online will widen. The uncertainty of the future of on-premise SharePoint environments, poses the question of how an organization with on-premise SharePoint can prepare for the future.  




What is Office 365?

Office 365 offers the organizations the opportunity to subscribe to Microsoft office applications without purchasing full licenses. The subscription service provides enterprises the ability to deploy Microsoft Office products to users without the overhead of configuration and maintenance. A subscription based offering will provide Microsoft’s services including Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Office Online and Lync Online. Service availability with each plan can be found at Office 365 Plans.
 




What is SharePoint Online?

SharePoint Online can be SharePoint online is offered either as a part of Office 365 suite or a standalone offering. SharePoint Online offers a collaborative environment for users with easy integration with corporate MS Office applications. While providing a cloud based document management solution, SharePoint online provides the capability of hosting public facing web site, Intranet, team sites for collaborating groups and my sites (a personal site for each employee with social networking capabilities).

SharePoint Platform Options


SharePoint Hosting/Platform Options
 
 



(Microsoft Corporation, 2014)


SharePoint Online Subscription Options


SharePoint Online Multi-Tenant

In SharePoint online multi tenancy environment, data and sites and some services are partitioned for each tenant while server farm resources are shared among several tenants. Each subscription ID is provided with a host-named site collection.

SharePoint Online Dedicated

SharePoint Online dedicated plans are delivered through dedicated hardware provided by Microsoft Corporation.

Advantages and Disadvantages of adopting SharePoint Online


Pros
Provides better security controls compared to on premise installations as MS utilizes specialized individuals to secure the systems and data using industry accepted standards
Can be purchased as part of office 365 or standalone plan
Enterprises do not have to purchase next version of Office software, instead they can switch to a subscription plan and the vendor will be responsible for the upgrades.

Reduces resource requirements to troubleshoot and maintain the system

Reduces the investment on hardware
Can provide easy access to information that needs access outside the organization and reduces costs associated with remote access (customer/partner access)
Service packs, hot fixes and bug fixes are applied and maintained by the vendor reducing possible downtime
OneDrive provides individual storage for each user. The storage amount depends on the subscription plan
Service Level Agreements would provide guaranteed uptime or service credit
Tenant Administrator can manage multiple subscriptions from the same admin site providing easy management and administration of various subscriptions
MS has not announced enhancements and new features beyond 2015 on premise version while MS asserts that “the best experience and innovation will occur in the cloud” (Gartner, 2014)
Data and services are logically partitioned without exposing tenant specific data
Cons
The data is stored in vendor hardware which is not owned by the enterprise
Future migration from SharePoint Online to another system may be a risk factor in multitenant offering if not built into the contractual terms
SharePoint online does not allow highly customized full trust code. Organizations with highly customized SharePoint applications may be presented with obstacles when migrating to Office 365 
Depending on the authentication configuration, there may be extra WCF code needed to be written and hosted for the people picker to work as expected (dedicated partner plans)
Price increases is a risk unless price protection is built into the terms
Data, sites, number of users per tenant limitations
Site data may be saved in a single content database shared by several tenants or data may be saved across multiple content databases which will not provide physical data isolation or data sovereignty
SharePoint Online may not be equipped to integrate with third party software that integrates with SharePoint either to enhance or fill gaps of SharePoint

How Should the SharePoint On-Premise Business Prepare for the Uncertain Future?

Upgrade to SharePoint 2013

SharePoint environment should be upgraded from SharePoint 2010 to 2013 version in order to start developing new “Apps for SharePoint”. SharePoint 2013 offers many options for developing applications including client side programming models and/or REST (TechNet, 2014). The different development models in SharePoint 2013 provide the opportunity to deploy the applications in the cloud, on-premise farm or cross-hosed in both cloud and on-premises. The migration from SharePoint 2010 to 2013 would start the preparation process for a future in the cloud. 

Convert Existing Customized Applications to SharePoint Apps

The biggest change that SharePoint developers have encountered in SharePoint 2013 is the introduction of SharePoint Add-ins (apps for SharePoint) model. These SharePoint Add-ins would work with SharePoint online. This is new way of developing, packing and deploying custom SharePoint functionality. These apps run outside the SharePoint server, either on a Windows Azure platform or a remote server or executing client side code on the end-user’s browser. These apps interact with SharePoint either through client side object model (CSOM) or REST API.
Sandboxed Solutions: While Microsoft promoted the concept of sandboxed solutions in SharePoint 2010 version, sandboxed applications are depricated in 2013. Microsoft has recommended developing “apps for SharePoint” instead of developing sandboxed solutions. While no-code sandboxed solutions are still supported in Office 365, custom managed code within sandboxed solutions have been deprecated (SharePoint Developer Team, sharePoint Dev Blog, 2014).
Customizations: An analysis of required customizations should be made before any solutions are developed. Considerations must be made to achieve the required customizations using out of the box configurations, SharePoint Designer, InfoPath Designer or Office 2013 applications.  
Existing and New Custom Solutions: Apps for SharePoint are self-contained extensions which includes cloud centered application logic, SharePoint components, and client-side scripts (TechNet, 2014).  However, apps for SharePoint does not use SharePoint server side object mode. All new applications must be developed as “apps for SharePoint” while steps must be taken to analyze and redesign and transform the existing applications to “apps for SharePoint”.

Reach Out to Third Party Vendors Regarding Their Support for SharePoint 2013 and/or the Cloud Environment

Many vendors have been providing add-on or gap solutions for the on-premise environments to close capability gaps of SharePoint. While many organizations are heavily invested in those third party tools, it must be ensured that organization’s needs, will still be met with either a migration to 2013 or to Office 365 by the vendors or new product features. The organizations need to perform a careful analysis of how the vendor will be supporting the product, additional costs, additional management or training requirements.
The organizations also have the option to get apps for SharePoint from the SharePoint App Store, a public marketplace for a fee or in some instances for free. The apps available on the App Store help enhance SharePoint functionalities.

Consider Other Products

While there are long list of established vendors in the horizontal portals market, there are new products increasingly entering and evolving. The hype cycle for horizontal portals from Gartner places Microsoft as one of the market leaders among IBM, Oracle, SAP and Liferay, while recognizing salesforce.com, Adobe, Backbase and Covisint as visionaries.
Migrating the existing content and adopting a new technology can produce many challenges and enterprises should make their decision based on their ability to evolve and adapt to new products.  

Conclusion

As the gap between SharePoint on-premise and SharePoint online will tend to widen, the enterprises need to consider long-term future of their portal and other integrating systems and transition towards SharePoint online or move towards a different portal product.

Resources

Gartner. (2014, 10). Magic Quadrant for Horizontal Portals. Retrieved 12 02, 2014, from Gartner: http://www.gartner.com/document/2861117?ref=QuickSearch&sthkw=horizontal%20portals&refval=145071602&qid=9939e7f646d2c6f5a194617183d3b9ee
Gartner. (2014, 04 09). Redefine Microsoft's Role in Your Web Strategy as SharePoint Moves to the Cloud . Retrieved December 01, 2014, from Gartner: http://www.gartner.com/document/2704218?ref=QuickSearch&sthkw=%22Office%20365%22%20tenant&refval=145003173&qid=b839b500e814b4c9971fd944c3b3519c
Microsoft Corporation. (2014, 10 13). Technical Diagrams. Retrieved 11 26, 2014, from Microsoft Technet: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn635312(v=office.15).aspx
Microsoft TechNet. (2014, 09 30). Weighing your options for SharePoint, Office 365 or a Hybrid Deployment? Retrieved 11 26, 2014, from Microsoft Technet: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/26933.weighing-your-options-for-sharepoint-office-365-or-a-hybrid-deployment.aspx
Office Development. (2014, 04 11). SharePoint 2013 .NET Server, CSOM, JSOM, and REST API index. Retrieved 12 02, 2014, from Office Development: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/dn268594(v=office.15).aspx
SharePoint Developer Team, sharePoint Dev Blog. (2014, 01 14). Deprecation of Custom Code in Sandboxed Solutions. Retrieved 12 02, 2014, from Blogs for Office developers: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sharepointdev/archive/2014/01/14/deprecation-of-custom-code-in-sandboxed-solutions.aspx
TechNet. (2014, 04 07). Switch from SharePoint 2010 solutions to apps for SharePoint. Retrieved 12 02, 2014, from TechNet: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/dn449636(v=office.15).aspx

Technical Diagrams. (2014, October 13). Retrieved 11 26, 2014, from Microsoft Technet: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkId=324594