Microsoft recently announced the new Verison of the famous Collaboration Software called SharePoint. The vNext which is due to be released in late 2015 (Q3\Q4) is named “SharePoint Server 2016″.

Although only a few of the details has been released yet, but let me summarize the key points for you : 

  • The next version of SharePoint server will be the most secure, stable and reliable version to date—allowing organizations to take advantage of cloud innovation on their terms.
  • SharePoint Server 2016 will offer customers enhanced, flexible deployment options, improved reliability and new IT agility, enabled for massive scale.
  • With SharePoint Server 2016, in addition to delivering rich on-premises capabilities, Microsoft will focus on robust hybrid enablement in order to bring more of the Office 365 experiences to the on-premises Customers.
  • The InfoPath 2013 application remains the last version to be released and will work with SharePoint Server 2016.
  • In addition to SharePoint 2016, Microsoft will also be launching Office 2016 later this year (the new version of the Classic Office desktop suite).

In terms of how the next Office 365 will evolve, Microsoft has released following notes :

Please Note – Microsoft might add some of the below features in the SharePoint 2016. Nothing official has been announced yet.

  • Microsoft is bringing experiences together across all Office technologies, adding new experiences like Office Delve and Office 365 Video alongside email, instant messaging and the traditional SharePoint workloads, while maintaining core IT and Dev capabilities for management and extensibility across all of these experiences, and establishing strong hybrid connections.
  • Microsoft will be delivering new ‘ready-to-go’ Portals that historically would have taken customers weeks, if not months, to build. NextGen Portals, by design, are intelligent, collaborative, mobile and ready to go. Office 365 Video, delivered in 2014, is the first NextGen Portal.
  • Expanding the concept of team sites, MS will bring together team content traditionally kept in SharePoint, along with the broader set of information across Office 365 including email, instant messaging, tasks, contacts, personal files, social feeds and more. This holistic team experience across Office 365 will offer simplified permissions for the user and holistic management, governance and extensibility models, making it a win for IT and for users.
  • With Power BI, MS will provide an opportunity to Create a “ready to go” solutions that users and IT can get up and running in minutes. Built on top of Office 365, Power BI provides an integrated analytical platform in the cloud that connects to your important information from where it lives via the Excel interface users know.
  • To help users work in new, more dynamic ways, MS Integrated the Yammer experience alongside Office documents and videos, as well as common line of business applications such as Dynamics CRM and Salesforce.com, and offer mobile access across platforms.
  • MS will Continue to refine and invest in capabilities like Rights Management, Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), eDiscovery, Legal Hold, Metadata Management and Policy Control, in addition to capabilities such as Data Loss Prevention (DLP) and Mobile Device Management (MDM) to deliver a rock solid, secure and reliable platform you can trust. 

Reference : http://www.learningsharepoint.com/category/sharepoint-2016/