SharePoint 2016: What’s new? And What to expect?

The Ignite Event took place in Chicago last week. According to what has been presented, here are the first news about the new SharePoint 2016! 

SharePoint 2016 looks like an enhancement of the existing SharePoint 2013 version.
Most of the SP2013 features will continue to work but in a more powerful way.

SharePoint 2016 will be focused on the following points:

• Security Compliance
• Advanced Analytics and Insights (data analysis and reporting)
• Cloud experience

The new features for this release include:

• Links: All URLs will be “Resource ID” based URLs. That means that if one of your document is rename, the document link won’t be broken.
• User Profile Service Application won’t be available anymore.
• In order to use the User Profile Services, you will need to use the Forefront Identity Manager separated from the SharePoint Farm (outside). The Active Directory will be there but there are no sync anymore
• SharePoint 2016 is a Cloud Inspired Infrastructure. The emphasis here is building a Hybrid platform to let users benefit from enhanced cloud innovations that Microsoft often releases for Office 365. One of the most important experience that MS will be introducing to On-Premises clients is the use of Cloud based Search. The power of Delve & Office Graph can also be now applied to the On-Premises Content and the integrated cloud of course.
• Add On-Premises Content to online Delve board
• Zero downtime Patching: all upgrades of SharePoint can be done online.
• New Service applications will have an integration option for Delve
• The New Hybrid Extranet will allow many scenarios
• New Repair button to restore Server Services depending on its role
• The Cloud subscription of services such as Azure Rights Management Services to on-premises setup
• The InfoPath 2013 application will work with SharePoint Server 2016

Analytics and Insights:

There is a huge improvement in how SharePoint records and displays data analytic and Reporting. SharePoint 2016 will provide monitoring form:

• Services
• Actions
• Usage
• Engagement
• Diagnostics
• In-Memory Analytics (SQL Server 2016 release). Let’s see in the next few months what will be announced. Maybe some enhancement of the integration between BI and SP2016

Social:

• Social improvements start with better Yammer integration to avoid social silos, better integration with the micro-blogging platform, with new capabilities..

Content Management capabilities:

• Improvement in Content limits: removed Character limit in URLs, increased File size to 10GB, remove the 5000 item limit. The list threshold has been increased
• Encryption enhancements
• Multi-factor authentication
• Data loss prevention
• eDiscovery
• Metadata management
• Policy control
• Mobile device management

Installation & Configuration Enhancements:

• OS – Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2010
• Database– 64 bit of SQL 2014

A brief summary of SharePoint 2016 using one word would be: CLOUD