SharePoint 2010 End of Life is Coming

If you’ve been holding on to your trusty SharePoint 2010 intranet or other legacy sites and applications, it’s a good time to understand:

• What does end of life really mean?
• What options do you have for a supported, upgraded platform like SharePoint Online or SharePoint Server 2019?

So, let’s take a look at some of the potential answers.

What does end of life really mean?

As of 13 October 2020, Microsoft will no longer issue any type of platform or security updates. This means your SharePoint Server 2010 sites:

• Will become highly vulnerable to any potential security issues
• Will likely start to have compatibility issues with updates to other systems or browsers
• Could fall out of compliance with industry regulations, standards, or accreditations.

Overall, this will increase your organisation’s risk on many fronts and that will become increasingly costly over time, especially if you have any mission-critical applications or content that are reliant on the health of your SharePoint solutions.

What options you have for a supported, upgraded platform like SharePoint Online or SharePoint Server 2019?

While digital workplace tools for employees have grown more diverse, one of the most common choices for intranets and collaboration remains SharePoint. Moving to a current version of SharePoint is the most straightforward path, and it also unlocks new functionality that better supports organisations plans for digital transformation.

If you need to remain on-premise, SharePoint Server 2019 is the latest version available. On-premise upgrades require a multi-phased approach – meaning you will need to temporarily hop through older versions along the way to your final platform – first upgrading to SharePoint Server 2013 before upgrading to SharePoint Server 2016 and finally ending on SharePoint Server 2019.

However, these days it’s more common to move to Office 365 and SharePoint Online. This gives you the opportunity to leverage the broader digital workplace platform capabilities available through Office 365. It makes sense to consider how new capabilities could benefit the ways your employees work versus a straight like-for-like technology upgrade.

Another key benefit to SharePoint Online is that you won’t ever need to worry about major version upgrades because it is an evergreen platform that continuously updates itself over time.

Now is a good time to start planning your move from SharePoint 2010 to a modern and supported platform to ensure your content and applications continue to be available. And just remember, a lot of the typical hurdles to upgrades, like customisations and content migration can likely be addressed with modern tools and automation.

Migrate to SharePoint 2016 or SharePoint Server 2019

If you have to stay on-premise, both SharePoint 2016 and SharePoint 2019 provide opportunities to upgrade and modernise your infrastructure and enable you to benefit from better collaboration and portal building technologies. However, keep in mind that to move to SharePoint 2019, you need to move to SharePoint 2016 first and before you can move to either, you need to move to SharePoint 2013.

Migrate to Office 365

Office 365 — or the more comprehensive Microsoft 365 — givers enterprises access to all Office productivity tools including SharePoint Online.

It also offers collaboration capabilities that are built around all the apps in Office 365, as well as team chat, online meetings, co-authoring and sharing files securely, group email and a social network for work. There is also built-in privacy, transparency and refined user controls. It’s easy to see why this is the most secure option.

Evolution of SharePoint

SharePoint has historically been many things to many different organisations — a pure document repository, an advanced workflow system, a supporting platform for various line of business applications and more.

Microsoft have continuously stated it is moving forward with a cloud first model, even using the cloud versions of SharePoint for the basis of its two most recent on-premise platforms, SharePoint 2016 and SharePoint 2019. This becomes important, as the cloud is where Microsoft is continuing to drive innovation and add new value to its collaboration platforms. The evolution of this platform has shown many changes and introductions in the form of features like OneDrive for Business, Microsoft Teams and Office 365 Groups, that continue to differentiate this platform from alternatives in the market.