Let us take a guess at what will be the next version of SharePoint. We know traditionally we have the three year release plans but MSFT has planned to a fast release cycles now. So let you creativity fly around and let us know what could/might be the next version of SharePoint?
MS are pushing us kicking and screaming into the Cloud but I still think there’s a lot of resistance and issues surrounding it. So I do think there will be one more new “on-premise” version, however, 10 years is already a long time for a product to be backwardly compatible.Â
(Backwards compatibility is good as it doesn’t break anything on upgrade, however, it’s also very restrictive as it means that the development team can’t innovate. Sure they can bring in new services, but the core SPWeb, SPSites, SPUsers and so on, all need to remain largely the same otherwise they break a ton of code. )
Anyway, to my point. I think the next version will be SharePoint 2015 and then they will release something entirely new on-premise that will integrate and synchronise closely with 365 in the Cloud. This product will let you choose what to keep on premise and what to stick in the Cloud and will also offer offline features for times when the networks are down.Â
So as a “wild guess” in the future SharePoint will be no more and the new product will be called “Office 365 On-Premise“. At this point they will release a migration tool that will let you move your content into Office 365 On-Premise or Cloud.
