Advantages & Disadvantages of SharePoint Online

Nearly, every business organization, big or small is progressively resorting on cloud computing; and their utmost choice for a cloud-based collaborative platform is none other than SharePoint Online. Lately, enterprises have started accepting the fact that Office 365 is not the universal remedy that fit all types of business organization. So, if you are planning to refresh or migrate to SharePoint Online, you must think of the advantages and disadvantages they can offer you, to make a well-thought decision about whether it is the right choice for your enterprise or not. Let’s with the paybacks and advantages first.

Advantages of SharePoint Online

• You will Get the New Features as Soon as They Released:

Microsoft offers it SharePoint Online users the privilege of getting all the newly released features and upgrades immediately as soon as they are commercially released; as compared to the On-Premise SharePoint users, and above all most of them are free. Also, some features and updates are not even meant be available for the on-premise versions.

• Special Office 365 Tools Are Available for Free:

A great benefit to migrate to SharePoint Online is that it allows you to get free access to a wide variety of useful integrated services and special Office 365 tools and features. For instance, it allows you to undertake employee assessments, quizzes, and surveys etc. It also provides you with the ‘Enterprise Search’ options which helps you to search internal enterprise data or manage privacy and restriction options by using Governance & Administration Rights, in case if you want to make any file invisible from the employee search. SharePoint Online enables you to create email and workflow tasks for your staff while using SharePoint Design.

• Increased Storage Capacities & Extra File Size for Sharing and Upload:

Along all the advancements that enhance your SharePoint performance, you can also enjoy the storage up to TB and file sharing up to GB in size on OneDrive.

• Technical Issues Management by Microsoft:

Using SharePoint Online, your enterprise can enjoy 100% uptime, because Office 365 is going to takes up all the efforts related to installation and setup. This means that you will not be required to hire in-house development team for platform maintenance and management; as all your technical assistance for your back-end processes will be carried out exclusively by the Microsoft team itself.

• Availability of the Hybrid Options:

The biggest advantage offered by the SharePoint Online is the answer to your concerns related to data security. It allows you to keep your confidential files on your on-premise setup while moving the less sensitive data over the cloud.

Disadvantages of Switching to SharePoint Online

• An End to Back-End Control:

If you are unwilling to hand over your back-up control of your on-premise setup, then this is indeed a matter of consideration. Although migrating to cloud would surely relieve your business headaches of technical assistance and support; however, for some enterprise, it may turn out to be a distraction to business operations.

• Customization Breakdown:

Although modern sites and classic sites on SharePoint allow you to certain level of customization, however regular updates also tend to break these customizations. When a new update or version is released by Microsoft, this might impact your existing customization settings. In order to be on the safer side, keep a keen eye on the upcoming releases and updates.

• Increased Bandwidth Obligation:

Ensure to increase your bandwidth before migrating to SharePoint Online, else you might experience slow performance of your operations, post-migration.

• Migration is Truly Challenging:

Migration from a legacy CMS or on-premise SharePoint is a hefty task and a complicated process, which requires skills and expertise of SharePoint developer. Being a professional SharePoint development agency, we would recommend you to hire expert SharePoint developer; and pass on all the related hassles to them to ensure that the entire migration process goes on effectively and smoothly.

We believe that you will find the above mentioned list of pros and cons related to SharePoint Online helpful and comprehensive. However, the decisive factor that will linger along is that, how comfortable you are in using cloud version of SharePoint. Hence, before making the final decision about SharePoint Online, we would suggest you to critically thick about all the shortcomings and payback of the platform in context of your organization, and let the SharePoint experts like Code Creators do the rest for you.