Why SharePoint Online is a much smarter choice than SharePoint On-Premise!

Security, is way tighter in SPO infact – and some features do not even exist in SP On-Premise.

For instance, with SPO:

1.     You get the ADFS integration – which means, you can take advantage of the ADFS features & security policies, location based control for SPO as well

2.     RMS – Rights Management Services – Azure RMS – is pre-configured in SPO and supports file types such as MS Office, PDF files, Images too – and all you need is the Azure Information Protection Client to view the protected files

3.     You get DLP (Data Loss Prevention) which is only available with SPO and I have created a presentation for this here – Have a look and using this, we can prevent confidential content such as documents containing patents, SSN numbers or SWIFT Codes or IP Addresses can be protected from going out

4.     SPO Content has multiple times encrypted and hence, the content is way secure than you can imagine

5.     On top of it, you can even prevent SPO Sites from being accessed through certain IP Addresses, prevent content from being accessed on Mobile Devices etc. – all of that through the OneDrive Admin Center: this is detailed here.

6.     All actions are audited and you can track downloads, files being accessed, files being edited – in https://protection.office.com – something that you don’t have with SP On-Premise!

You can do the below here:

·         Manage external sharing

·         Turn on external sharing notifications

·         Prevent users from installing the OneDrive sync client

·         Allow syncing only on computers joined to specific domains

·         Block syncing of specific file types

·         Set the default storage space

·         Preserve OneDrive files after users leave the organization

·         Control access based on network location or app

·         Control access to features in the OneDrive and SharePoint mobile apps

All of the above are so unique to SPO that, you just don’t get them in SP On-Premise. Thus, SPO is the way to go!

With Infra requirements, ofcourse, you do not need to plan for servers, capacity planning, sizing, connectivity, Disaster Recovery, Backup etc and all of that is available instantly

For workflows, Nintex can be eliminated with Custom Built Workflows and this is something I have briefed about in my SoW. HTML mails is not a concern at all!

On top of it, we have tools like Microsoft Flow: using which we can spin up no code workflows that can pull / push data with SPO – from Other Business Applications, Other O365 Applications, Social Applications etc. for instance, a FB Post, can add a SPO List Item! – and without writing any code! – Your marketing teams will love this…

Check all SPO Actions here

SPO Natively – with the modern Team Sites UI, are Responsive Design by default and hence will give a very smooth and convenient interface.

With more and more people accessing content over Mobile, you just cannot ignore this user base!

With the new SharePoint Online Framework, it allows you to create WebParts that take advantage of CDN – Content Delivery Network – where the JS, Images – assets related to your code are stored! – CDN automatically chooses the nearest O365 Data Center to render your assets and hence the SPO Sites render much faster. Read more here

SharePoint Online Usage Analysis feature is another one, that is unavailable with SP On-Premise. Infact, there is no roadmap to introduce elaborate Usage Analytics on SP On-Premise. With SPO, you have it right now! – This is so important, as you can clearly see your usage trends, top users, top sites, top documents and much more!

On top of all of these, you have the integration with:

1.     Microsoft Delve  - to automatically bring in relevant content from SPO and OneDrive

2.     SharePoint Mobile App from MS – to see SPO Sites from the mobile app itself on the go

3.     Microsoft PowerApps Integration – for you to create cross platform mobile apps from your SharePoint content, for example, you can create a field engineer app – to collect service incidents on the app and have it stored on SPO Lists!

4.     Microsoft Power BI Integration – for you to create dashboards out of your SPO Lists. For instance, you record say, a set of invoices on SPO, you can create a visual dashboard in Power BI using this data

Thus, holistically speaking and considering, SPO is a much smarter choice for any organization as they embark on the SP strategy!