Businesses are always looking to enhance their communication strategies and integrate smarter workflow and data-sharing processes. Microsoft, through its cloud-based application SharePoint Online and localized SharePoint On-Premise, provides organizations with modern and competitive digital communication and collaboration solutions.
But, often, businesses don’t know which of these two applications would suit them best and what implications it may have on their operations. This has led to delays in moving workloads to the cloud.
In this post, we’ll look at the differences between SharePoint Online and On-Premise and when you should choose either for your business.
But first, let’s learn the basics of Microsoft SharePoint.
What Is Microsoft SharePoint?
SharePoint is a highly flexible platform that provides an information focal point for collaborations and document management.
There are two variations of SharePoint: SharePoint Online and SharePoint On-Premise. They both provide unique functionalities for any organization looking to enhance productivity and innovation.
Now let’s take a closer look at SharePoint Online vs. On-Premise to understand what they offer your business.
SharePoint Online
SharePoint Online is a powerful web-based application, which comes as part of the Microsoft 365 Office suite, that makes it possible for seamless collaboration and information exchange across an organization.
Put simply, it’s the cloud version of the SharePoint platform and is licensed on a per-user basis.
SharePoint Online is available for purchase as a standalone product or as part of the Microsoft 365 plans.
The options are:
- SharePoint Online (Plan 1)
It’s ideal for small and medium-sized businesses and comes with 1TB of OneDrive storage, safe file sharing both on-site and off-site, access to Microsoft Lists, and a host of organization, content creation, and sharing tools.
- SharePoint Online (Plan 2)
This plan comes with fully featured enterprise-level capabilities, including unlimited personal cloud storage and DLP to monitor and protect sensitive information.
- Office 365 E3
This plan encompasses all the Office applications, plan 2 features, and more.
SharePoint On-Premise
SharePoint On-Premise is an in-house version of SharePoint installed on your local servers. Your IT department runs the application, makes the updates, and can add features or customization to the application.
The intranet sites are licensed using a Server/CAL (Client Access License) model. For every running of the software, SharePoint Server 2019 is required, and any person or device should provide a CAL to gain access to a SharePoint server.
The packages are:
- SharePoint Standard CAL
The Standard CAL provides the core competencies of SharePoint, including a single infrastructure for all your organization’s sites, an integrated collaboration forum, and a mass enterprise content management system (CMS).
- SharePoint Enterprise CAL
The Enterprise CAL provides all the SharePoint capabilities mentioned above and more, including Access and InfoPath services and business intelligence perks such as Excel Service, Power View, PerformancePoint Services, and Visio Services.