When Microsoft announced Office 365 Groups at the SharePoint conference in September, IT managers new this was a worrying sign for SharePoint.
Why? Because Office 365 Groups is going to make it easier for teams to share information and collaborate on projects, essentially eliminating the need for SharePoint.
Instead of using multiple apps like email distribution in Outlook, buddy lists in Lync and team sites in SharePoint, Office 365 Groups will bring everything together inside one tool.
The future for a typical SharePoint project looks bleak. I believe in the next 6-12 months, most small SharePoint setups will migrate over to Groups. Larger, more complex SharePoint projects will stay alive simply because, as an intranet and collaboration tool, it still offers value.
But if you’re a small setup, get ready to move. Right now, Groups is only available to online users of Office 365. Until Groups integrates with the offline versions, most businesses will not be able to benefit because some employees will still be using the offline versions of Office.
The future with Groups means that there will no longer be any need for SharePoint team sites and site collections. You’ll be able to use Groups to set up ad-hoc groups for your team members that they can use inside their existing tools - like Outlook - to share, communicate and collaborate.
This is great news. For smaller organisations, SharePoint is heavy and slow and too complicated for some users. The team sites and site collection features are hard to train employees on, which results in many frustrated users bypassing IT and using Dropbox anyway.
Office 365 makes it easier with Groups
Here are the benefits of Groups:
- Easy access to sharing files
- Files located in ‘OneDrive for Business’ folder
- Gives you access and ability to set permissions via Outlook - no need for another tool
- Powered by Azure Active Directory
Take a look at this video to learn how Groups brings people together to enable better communication and collaboration across Office 365.
Our predictions: Businesses will move their files from SharePoint to OneDrive for Business
Microsoft is creating a better user experience by bypassing SharePoint. Our prediction is that users will switch to Office 365 Groups to handle conversations, files and permissions. Accessing important files, data and communication inside Groups will eliminate the need to jump into SharePoint.
Although SharePoint technology will be facilitating these functions, the user will not see it. This will offer a seamless experience inside the tools that users are already familiar with.
SharePoint will still live on as a platform for more complex projects, but for the average small organisation, it will become invisible and be replaced by OneDrive for Business.
OneDrive for Business will be the central destination where you will host all your company and personal files. Your employees will store, collaborate and share documents via OneDrive for Business. They will also be able to host their personal files on their personal OneDrive folder - much like they currently do with DropBox. This may eliminate your need for a file server.
Are you ready to take advantage of these changes?
If you want to stay ahead of the game and use technology - like Office 365 Groups - to help your team be more productive, give us a call on 1300 562 886 and we can discuss the best solution for your company.
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