A publication of
Making the
SharePoint 2013
Upgrade Decision
There are several factors to consider when deciding to upgrade existing package applications. One of the most critical factors is the improvements offered by the newer version and how they will benefit your organization.
With the release of SharePoint 2013, many organizations have already made the strategic business decision to upgrade. However, if your organization is still on an older version of SharePoint, new features and capabilities of SharePoint 2013 will undoubtedly influence your decision to upgrade.
This eBook will describe the most noteworthy functionalities available in SharePoint 2013 and show how these features differ from previous versions. It will also address some frequently asked questions about migrating to SharePoint 2013.
Introduction
Microsoft has made significant improvements in SharePoint 2013, providing business benefits that make migrating to the latest version of SharePoint a sound investment for all organizations. Below, we evaluate the most significant changes that promise to improve your organization's SharePoint experience.
The Benefits of Migrating
from SharePoint 2007/2010
to 2013
Business Intelligence
Business Intelligence (BI) in SharePoint 2013 provides comprehensive BI tools that integrate across Microsoft Office applications and other Microsoft technologies. These BI tools are: Excel 2013, Excel Services in SharePoint 2013, PerformancePoint Services in SharePoint Server 2013, Visio Services in SharePoint, SharePoint 2013 and Microsoft SQL Server.
Excel BI provides the capabilities to analyze and visually explore data of any size, and to integrate and show interactive solutions. Users are able to explore data and conduct analysis in a browser window just as they would by using the Excel client. PowerPivot feature has the ability to process billions of rows of data and create powerful data mash-ups in collaboration with Excel Services. PerformancePoint and Dashboard Designer Services allow users to create rich interactive dashboards using internal and external data, display key performance indicators (KPIs) and data visualizations in the form of scorecards, reports and filters.
Search
Enterprise wide search in SharePoint 2013 sees significant improvements with the aim of making search faster, better and highly customizable. Microsoft FAST Search technology is now fully-integrated out of the box in SharePoint 2013 and does not require a separate license. Continuous search crawling ensures that whenever a
Users have several advanced search features to help them locate content across the enterprise. Hover Panel previews are available for all Microsoft Office documents, making it easier to quickly find the correct document. Advanced search features allow users to search by metadata type and customize the search results, thus giving users the ability to tailor the results based upon content type. Improved search analytics lets users save results and analyze them according to various parameters. SharePoint 2013 also features hybrid search support for environments that run both on premise (server) and on cloud (Office 365) instances of SharePoint.
eDiscovery Center: Another great search feature of SharePoint 2013 is the eDiscovery Center for legal discovery requirements. A site template allows the legal team to search for content across the enterprise, including people's inboxes. The new SharePoint 2013 eDiscovery Center allows for searches across SharePoint, Exchange and Lync environments, querying and filtering of data by specific variables, and placing of holds on content that might be subject to legal review.
Application Store
SharePoint 2013 is the first version to offer an application store to download apps created by Microsoft as well as those created by third-party providers and developers. The new Apps Store model empowers end users, reduces IT department load and enhances the active after-market for SharePoint add-ons.
These applications can extend the personalization and longevity of your SharePoint environment and augment the features already available in SharePoint 2013. They can extend SharePoint Online websites as well as on premises SharePoint websites. Additionally, organizations can create their own applications for inter-organizational use or publish for wide distribution and revenues.
SharePoint 2013 continues to build upon Microsoft's cloud app model for development, with support for major languages and tool. Developers can write and publish apps to SharePoint's own public app store or to an internal store available to employees only. SharePoint Apps development supports cross-platform standards, including HTML, REST, OData, JavaScript and OAuth, and enables developers to leverage the SharePoint cross-domain JavaScript library to access SharePoint data.
Social
SharePoint 2013 completely revamps the social enterprise experience by integrating with consumer social networks and extending social computing benefits to business users, including personal sites, activity feeds and communities. Familiar social tools such as micro blogs, activity feeds, community sites, likes and reputations are included with popular features found in social networks such as hash tags, app mentions and real-time updates. Users can now “follow” and receive real-time status updates on people, documents and topics, for example, an account manager uploading an expense report sheet for approval.
The new “Community Sites” feature replaces Team Sites from prior SharePoint versions with capabilities similar to internet forums. SharePoint 2013 now offers full integration with Yammer. Yammer, the best-in-class enterprise social network, empowers employees to be more productive by enabling them to collaborate in real-time across departments, geographies and business applications. The integration of familiar social networking features across the SharePoint 2013 experience allows for a deeper level of collaboration, formerly not possible in previous SharePoint versions. SharePoint 2013 aligns with current and future trends in the social space and this alone can be a key driving factor in going in for an upgrade.
Mobile
Mirroring consumer trends, businesses are adopting smartphones and tablets at a greater pace than traditional PCs. SharePoint 2013 acknowledges the expectations of many users to be able to access their desktop applications on any device, and the mobile features offered enable workers to remain productive away from their desk. Users now can pick from three different mobile browsing options. An HTML5-based contemporary view, optimized for various screen sizes across iOS, Android and Windows mobile devices. A classic view for backward compatibility and a full-screen user interface for the ability to have a full desktop view of a SharePoint site on a smartphone device.
SharePoint 2013 also enables developers and administrators to deliver customizable, device-specific designs rather than a one-size-fits-all experience. Geo-location and push notification functionality has also been added and drives added value for companies which want to keep remote users in the loop 24/7. Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents are fully viewable on mobile devices with Office Web Apps functionality. Web based access to office applications ensures that content can be published across multiple formats such as the intranet, extranet, web and mobile sites.
Cloud
SharePoint 2013 has the flexibility to run entirely from the cloud, entirely on premise or in a hybrid approach.
SharePoint Online, the cloud version of SharePoint 2013, offers significant improvements over its predecessor.
Organizations that run SharePoint Online as part of an Office 365 environment can experience the benefits of a new set of management tools integrated with Office 365. This enables administrators to run many of the newer SharePoint 2013 features, such as creating a corporate app store, optimizing search settings and adding and managing users and sites.
SharePoint 2013 can be easily integrated with Microsoft's cloud infrastructure Azure services making it easy to facilitate public sharing of files and build public facing extranets. Additionally, there is full integration and support with SkyDrive Pro, the business variant of Microsoft's cloud storage service, SkyDrive. This increased emphasis on the cloud enables greater productivity for all users within the organization, allowing them to view and edit documents on SharePoint exactly as they would on their local computer.
Better Email Integration
Recognizing the importance of full integration between email and SharePoint content, SharePoint 2013 has introduced the Site Mailbox feature which creates an exchange inbox for a SharePoint 2013 site. Now users can share SharePoint 2013 sites, drag and drop emails into the Site Mailbox and forward important emails to SharePoint 2013 with one click.
Users can also drag and drop attachments and documents directly from email messages into the document library which is associated with the SharePoint 2013 site. SharePoint 2013 maintains the documents, while Exchange maintains the emails, ensuring that each are handling the task they do best. The interfaces have been brought together to provide a seamless experience, resulting in a much better integration with Outlook.
Branding
Microsoft has made creating a branded look easier in SharePoint 2013, especially for users with minimal SharePoint designing experience. The new Design Manager feature placed under the Publishing >> Site Actions menu is an important new addition for SharePoint 2013 site designers. SharePoint designers can now create and edit Master Pages using the Design Manager. Branding becomes effortless with the ability to quickly create a master page design or convert an existing HTML design to a master page.
Designers can preview the new master page they create, and a snippet gallery allows them to copy and paste SharePoint 2013 functionality like navigation, search and web parts right to the HTML based design. The cross-site publishing feature that enables you to reuse content across multiple site collections and Save Design Packages feature can be used to package and install the same design across multiple sites. The Central Administration page is also brand-able in SharePoint 2013.
Business Connectivity Services
Business Connectivity Services (BCS) in SharePoint 2013 provides the infrastructure for creating rich productivity and collaboration solutions that can work with a variety of external data sources. SharePoint 2013 introduces support for OData Business Data Connectivity (BDC) connections to reveal external data from enterprise applications, web services, and other OData services in SharePoint 2013. Team Foundation Server, SQL Server 2012, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Windows Azure, Sitefinity CMS and SAP NetWeaver, are just some of the major applications that support OData connections to SharePoint 2013.
Support for External Content Types is at the core of BCS in SharePoint 2013. Managing metadata and reusing the behaviors of a business entity can be done by simply creating external content types and then reusing them as needed. Other external data extensions such as REST APIs, Remote event receivers and rich client Microsoft Office components, enable users to create advanced solutions that enable complex scenarios and data rich applications using BCS.
Workflow Process Development
SharePoint Workflows enable automated movement of documents or items through a sequence of actions or tasks that are related to a business process, thus enabling people to concentrate on performing the work rather than managing the procedure. SharePoint 2013 includes a completely redesigned workflow framework that differs significantly from prior SharePoint releases. Microsoft Azure has been introduced as the new workflow execution host, with the “engine” now existing outside of SharePoint on the cloud. This new cloud based engine can be easily extended and is far more scalable than prior versions.
Designing workflows is also simpler, thanks to deep integration with Microsoft Visio 2013 and Visual Studio 2012, providing portability between different development environments. These additions provide a great benefit to SharePoint 2013 developers, who can now quickly and easily design workflows to make your SharePoint 2013 environment even more productive.
The chart below provides a high-level side-by-side feature comparison between SharePoint 2013, 2010 and 2007.
Features Summary
Feature SharePoint 2007 SharePoint 2010 SharePoint 2013
New Workflow Infrastructure
Automatic Translation Service
App Catalog and Marketplace
SkyDrive Pro
Community Sites
Native support for iOS / Android
Site and Company Feeds
FAST Search and Continuous Crawl
Excel Power View
Visio Services
SharePoint Health Analyzer
Document Sets
Business Connectivity Services
Auditing and Reporting
Office Web Apps
The table above is not all-inclusive of features and capabilities available in SharePoint. The features listed may not apply to all SKUs of the indicated version of SharePoint. For example, a feature listed in the chart for SharePoint 2013 may not exist in SharePoint Foundation 2013.
(available as a separate installer)
It is highly recommended to upgrade directly to SharePoint 2013. There are no features in SharePoint 2010, which cannot be found in SharePoint 2013. Keep in mind there is no official upgrade path from SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint 2013 like there is from SharePoint 2010 to SharePoint 2013.
The most common implementation method would be a “double-hop” upgrade by performing a series of database-attach upgrades to first migrate the content to SharePoint 2010 Products, and then to SharePoint 2013. You will save money and manpower up-front by committing to one upgrade now, rather than two separate upgrades.
FAQs
My organization currently runs on SharePoint 2007.
Should I migrate to SharePoint 2010 first or skip directly
to 2013?
One of SharePoint's greatest strengths is its many options for customizing sites with integrations, third-party add-ons and tools. Extensive custom development can make upgrades more cumbersome. Working with an experienced SharePoint development partner will be beneficial to decide what customizations can be migrated. It is advisable to plan for retesting your customization when upgrading in order to minimize the risk of migrated customizations not working with your new SharePoint environment.
My SharePoint 2007/2010 environment is heavily
customized, what will this do to my potential 2013
migration?
Microsoft's SharePoint upgrade tools have basic support for upgrading from SharePoint 2010 and do not support migrating from SharePoint 2003/2007 at all. The business reasons will more likely outweigh the technical reasons for using a migration tool. Since many organizations have business processes that need to be migrated, it would be beneficial to consider third party tools if the out-of-box migration tools don't support alignment with your business process. Highly customized SharePoint environments that are important to the business should be migrated in a modular fashion with smaller workloads. This ensures that content can be properly analyzed, customizations can be evaluated and users can be appropriately trained.
Will I need to use third party migration tools to perform
content migration to SharePoint 2013?
When comparing the SharePoint Server, which you install on your own premises, and SharePoint Online which runs "in the cloud", most features and capabilities are common to both versions of the product. Microsoft provides customer support to both, the cloud subscription users and the on premise server product, so the
How do I decide whether to install SharePoint 2013
on-site or on-cloud?
challenge remains in choosing the right option for your business or possibly going for a hybrid approach.
Collaborating with a trusted Microsoft partner to carefully analyze your business and IT needs, will ensure a consistent and flawless user experience, no matter where your data is located.
Upgrading to SharePoint 2013 involves certain considerations regarding change management, as there are new ways to do certain things compared to previous versions, while some familiar features have been removed or fused with other features. Silicus recommends starting with a well thought out governance model as the first task to focus on. A cross-functional team of key decision makers across the organization should be setup to develop a robust governance structure to define policies. The governance team can take responsibility to establish a common look and uniform branding, as well as a reliable definition of data. The entire SharePoint 2013 adoption process, including roadmap definition, solution design, code execution, approval and deployment should be covered by the governance team.
What are the key changes we need to focus on when
adopting SharePoint 2013?
SharePoint 2013 has an improved security architecture compared to previous versions, although effective security requires good deployment planning and an implementation partner with deep knowledge of the security capabilities. Enhanced collaboration, sharing and search technology within SharePoint 2013 means that finding sensitive information may be easier, if it's not properly secured. Best practices include having specific managed accounts for specific purposes with minimum level of privileges and permissions. An important change in SharePoint 2013 is the exclusive use of claims based authentication with the removal of the classic mode configuration interface.
What are the security risks associated with using the new
features in SharePoint 2013?
Yes, everyone can be granted access to the SharePoint App Store where you can buy and install apps from third-party developers for personal or organizational use. The SharePoint Store is essentially a version of the Office Store that is accessible only from a SharePoint 2013 site. SharePoint Apps can be installed and removed using the Site Contents page.
You can even develop your SharePoint 2013 apps and deploy them to the public app store or restrict access to your own organization, depending on your objectives.
Will I be allowed to download and buy SharePoint Apps?
Can I develop and deploy my own Apps?
If you are interested in migrating your SharePoint 2007/2010 environment to SharePoint 2013, our SharePoint experts will guide and ensure a smooth transition. Please visit our web site to learn more about our SharePoint migration services (www.silicus.com/sharepoint-consulting-services/sharepoint-migration-
I'm interested in migrating. What is the next step?
About Silicus
Silicus is a software and business technology services company focused on helping enterprises realize new opportunities for competitive advantage, business growth and operational efficiency. In 15 years of delivering technology consulting, development, testing and management services, Silicus has become the partner of choice for enterprises globally and has earned a reputation for agility and reliability.
A member of the Business-Critical SharePoint (BCSP) partner program and a Microsoft Partner with several competencies at Gold and Silver levels, Silicus helps organizations with their Microsoft Application needs across .NET, SharePoint, SQL, Dynamics, BizTalk and Azure platforms. For more information www.silicus.com.
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