Microsoft’s SharePoint 2016 and Enterprise Cloud Hybrid Search Beta Released

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Microsoft recently launched two new software beta versions – SharePoint Server 2016 IT Preview and the new cloud hybrid search preview for SharePoint Server 2013 and 2016 on Monday, August 24th, 2015. With the clear vision to pay trends in content management, user experiences across devices, team association, and  ways to unify cloud into existing on-premises scenarios, Microsoft launched the software.

SharePoint 2016

image via: rishabhsoft.com

About SharePoint Server 2016

While SharePoint Server 2016 is the newest form of Microsoft’s popular team collaboration software, the beta version is designed to offer IT administrators a prototype of the upcoming Microsoft official update next year, which is going to be released the next year.

Key features for SharePoint 2016 include:

  • Support for large files up to 10GB in size
  • A new App Launcher to ease the users in opening applications from the navigation bar inside SharePoint.
  • The controls for sharing files have also been simplified.

The cool part of SharePoint 2016 is that it focuses on improving the experience for smartphone and tablet users with controls that better support using touch to get around SharePoint sites.

However, Microsoft has fairly warned the early adopters not to install the beta of SharePoint Server 2016 in a production environment. This is because it will not be possible to directly update from the beta to the final version of the software when it will be released next year.

About Cloud Hybrid Search

Microsoft’s new cloud hybrid search feature will ease Office 365 users to access easily both the files stored in their company’s servers and those stored in Microsoft’s cloud. The new cloud hybrid search also run on-premises SharePoint servers. Indexing for cloud hybrid search is handled in Office 365 meaning that the users can now lessen the amount of work their servers do around creating and maintaining search indices.

The cloud hybrid search beta is available as an additional feature for organizations that use SharePoint 2013 or SharePoint 2016, in addition to Office 365. 

Although users can now set up cloud hybrid search on their on-premises SharePoint servers, however configuring it for use with Office 365 isn’t possible until early September.