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Everything you always wanted to know about SharePoint 2016


SharePoint 2016 –The new kid in town. Well, I hope you won’t mind when I say that SharePoint 2016 is the new kid in town considering the fact that it has been more than a year since Microsoft has released SharePoint Server 2016 and it has also announced the release of SharePoint Server 2019 a month back at Ignite Conference.  However, there’s reason for me to still call SharePoint 2016 as the new kid in town because it still remains to be a cutting-edge platform for many SharePoint professionals out there and I’ve seen many organizations actively working on adapting SharePoint Server 2016 as the modern collaboration platform for their IT workspace.
So, in this article, I’m going to help you with some good amount of information that should help you in planning the SharePoint Server 2016 Implementation in your organization. Alright, let’s get started ….
So, these are the topics I’ll be discussing in detail in this article …
  • Evolution of SharePoint
  • Software & Hardware requirements for Implementing SharePoint Server 2016.
  • Pre-requisites for SharePoint server 2016.
  • Supported browsers for SharePoint 2016.
  • Boundaries and Limits in SharePoint 2016.
  • Focus areas of SharePoint Server 2016

Evolution of SharePoint:

Evolution of SharePoint
The above-mentioned image should give you a detailed overview of the evolution of SharePoint. I personally remember starting my career with SharePoint 2010 6 years back and at that point of time I’ve seen many experienced SharePoint folks really getting excited about the rich and cool UI of SharePoint 2010 and its rich capabilities.  It has indeed come a long way since then and has grown very rapidly compared to its competitors and still remains to be the most preferred solution for Enterprise Content Management. As SharePoint grew, the range of problems businesses could solve with SharePoint grew wider, and changes in technology and business models brought customers new problems as well as new opportunities.
Microsoft kept investing in SharePoint, creating a well-rounded collaboration platform that meets the needs of businesses and – most importantly – has the ability to grow and adapt when new challenges are presented. So, with that being said, let’s dive bit deeper and see what the latest version of SharePoint on-premises (i.e. SharePoint 2016) has for us and how it can help to enhance our business.

Software & Hardware requirements for Implementing SharePoint Server 2016:

Every time Microsoft introduces the next version of any product the software and hardware requirements for implementing that product keeps changing and that remains true for SharePoint 2016 as well. So, what should I have in terms of software and hardware for implementing SharePoint Server 2016? The details are as follows ….

Software Requirements for SharePoint 2016 Software Requirements for SharePoint 2016

Pre-requisites for SharePoint 2016:

SharePoint 2016, the prerequisites are almost essentially the same as they were for SharePoint 2013, with one or two differences (e.g. .Net Framework 4.5.2). The following is a list of all the SharePoint 2016 Prerequisites components you need to download if you are doing an offline installation.
Note: If your machine is connected to the internet, the prerequisite installer module of the SharePoint 2016 media will automatically take care of downloading and installation of prerequisites, so you don’t need to manually download them all.

Supported browsers for SharePoint 2016:

supported browsers for SharePoint 2016

Boundaries and Limits in SharePoint 2016:

Boundaries and Limits in SharePoint 2016

Hardware Requirements for SharePoint 2016:

Hardware Requirements for SharePoint 2016

Hardware Requirements for MinRole Architecture:

Note: I’ll be explaining in detail about the MinRole Architecture later in this article
Hardware Requirements for MinRole Architecture

Focus areas of SharePoint Server 2016:

Focus areas of SharePoint Server 2016
Being a cloud-born on-premises platform, SharePoint 2016 focuses on the above-mentioned areas …
  1. Improved User Experiences:
  2. Cloud-Inspired Infrastructure
  3. Compliance and Reporting

a) Improved User Experiences

Making decisions faster and keeping in contact is the most critical responsibilities for increasing effectiveness in any organization. Users’ ability to access information while on the go is now a workplace necessity. SharePoint Server 2016 will provide improved mobile access to content, people and applications along with touch-based experiences across devices and screen sizes.
It will make file storage and document collaboration more people-centric. And it will also enable improved user experiences and capabilities derived from innovations in Office 365, available either as part of your on-premises deployment or through a hybrid implementation of SharePoint Server 2016 and Office 365. As a result of this, users will be able to quickly discover contextually relevant information and data that is stored across both on-premises and cloud environments powered by Office Graph and Delve.

B) Cloud-Inspired Infrastructure:

SharePoint 2016 is the first on-premises server release representative of our experience running SharePoint at scale in Office 365, bringing Microsoft’s own internal investments to the customer’s datacenter that improve performance, reliability and scale as well as enabling true hybrid scenarios that can enrich the customer’s existing on-premises investments.
In addition, with an improved, simplified user experience and integration with products such as the next release of Windows Server, the next generation of SQL Server, and Exchange Server 2016, SharePoint Server 2016 will simplify end-user training and support for IT.

c) Compliance and Reporting:

Data Loss Prevention (DLP) is non-negotiable, and overexposure to information can have legal and compliance implications. SharePoint Server 2016 will provide a broad array of features and capabilities designed to make certain that sensitive information remains protected with investments in DLP, new scenarios to enable data encryption, and compliance tools that span on-premises servers and Office 365 while providing a balance between enabling user self-service and ensuring content usage adheres to corporate and security policies .This ensures that the privilege you have doesn’t become intrusive to security and compliance.
That’s all for now. Let us discuss other SharePoint Server 2016 features in an upcoming blog. I am planning to write a 4-part series on this topic, so stay tuned. As always, looking forward to your comments.

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