In the cloud or better on-premises? Which SharePoint variant is more suitable for you? Our experts know what is important in practice and have summarized the most important differences for you.
With SharePoint Online or Office 365 as Software as a Service (SaaS), you are relieved of some things that you traditionally had to control yourself in the on-premises version. So that you know exactly which these are and which variant is the most suitable for you, I will show you the differences in operation using eight points of comparison;
Functional Scope – Mobile First, Cloud First
Microsoft has been pursuing the “mobile-first, cloud-first” strategy for some time. In connection with SharePoint, this means that new functions are implemented first for the online version and are only available for on-premise installations at a later point in time.
The most noticeable innovations in recent times are certainly the so-called ‘Modern Sites’. A complete redesign of the SharePoint surface was undertaken. This redesign is completely responsive from the start (ideally suited for viewing on mobile devices) and also offers a new development approach for extensions under the name “SharePoint Framework”.
This new approach will be expanded even further and new “community sites” with a modern look and feel will soon be available. Also, take a look at the “SharePoint Virtual Summit” from May 2017.
We assume that these modern pages will also be ported towards SharePoint On-Premise, but not until much later. With this example, you can already see where the journey is going. New, modern tools are initially only available from the cloud. It can be assumed that certain tools are also only available in the cloud.
Modern Collaboration Tools
In recent years, Microsoft has worked intensively on the complete Office 365 suite. Modern tools are already available online to increase your productivity.
The integration of Microsoft PowerApps, Microsoft Flow, and, among others, Azure Functions with SharePoint Online offers completely new possibilities for the use of SharePoint content and processes. There are also insightful webinars available for you to take a closer look at these tools.
The consideration you have to make yourself: How would my employees like to work? How do you work today and what do you expect from a modern platform? If you are confronted with requirements such as mobile access or even mobile collaboration, in my opinion, you cannot avoid Office 365 or SharePoint Online.
Of course, the hybrid working option is a variant that will appeal to some of you. You can therefore have your data in your data center and at the same time use the advantages of SharePoint Online.
Updates
With the on-premises version of SharePoint, it is your job to carry out and manage the updates yourself. In contrast to this, Microsoft takes on the management, installation, and deployment of the updates for SharePoint Online.
Availability
In your data center, you ensure that availability is guaranteed. With Office 365, however, Microsoft guarantees 99.5 percent availability of services (including Exchange and SharePoint) with an SLA.
Backups
In SharePoint Online, Microsoft regularly creates backups of the entire farm itself. Apart from that, they ensure the redundancy of the systems so that all services remain available, even if certain components fail in the data center. In your own data center, however, you must ensure that regular backups are created and then tested.
Connection of External Users
If you use SharePoint On-Premises, you have to create infrastructure to connect external users. On top of that, you will not be able to avoid setting up security features (such as login and multi-factor authentication) yourself.
In SharePoint Online, the connection of external users is already included, which can be easily expanded with various Azure services, so that you can implement functions such as two-factor authentication relatively easily.
Scaling
Bottlenecks, such as database queries that are too slow, must be identified and remedied in the SharePoint On-Premises variant, whereas Microsoft does the scaling with Office 365.
Management
You can of course do what you want on your farm. Central administration and PowerShell as a local administrator or farm administrator are available to you.
With SharePoint Online you move to a farm that is client-separated but still contains several clients. For this reason, you do not have access to the farm level of SharePoint, but only to your tenant level. The whole thing is mapped via the SharePoint admin center.
However, you have the option of loading various Power Shell cmdlets with which you can automate administrative tasks in SharePoint Online. These power shell commands run from your infrastructure and connect accordingly to SharePoint Online or Office 365.
Certain services that would normally be available in your central administration (such as the Business Connectivity Service and metadata management) can still be found in SharePoint Online. Here, too, Microsoft has followed suit and designed the whole thing for the SharePoint Online version with multi-client capability.
A Comparison of SharePoint On-Premises & Online: An Overview
| SharePoint On-Premises | SharePoint Online | |
| Scope Of Functions | New Tools Will Be Available Later. | First Ported Online By MS. |
| Modern Collaboration Tools | You Are Responsible For The Implementation | Microsoft Works Intensively On These Tools |
| Updates | Managed And Installed In-House | Managed And Installed By MS |
| Availability | They Ensure The Availability | SLA With 99.9% Availability |
| Backup | You Need To Make Backups | Backup And Redundancy Ensured By MS |
| Connection Of External User | Infrastructure Required On Your Side | Already Included |
| Scaling | Detection Of Bottlenecks & Rectification On Your Part. | Scaling Is Done By MS |
| Management | Central Administration & PowerShell. | SP Admin Center & PowerShell |
Kylie Jenner is passionate, experienced IT consultant and content writer.
