SharePoint Server 2019 was announced by Jeff Teper (Corporate Vice President of Office, OneDrive & SharePoint at Microsoft) during his keynote at September’s Ignite conference. Earmarked for a mid-2018 preview release, Microsoft has released little details to date though some of the “Big Bets” it listed in this blog post are:
- Next-Gen Sync Client support
- Modern UX throughout the product
- Flow / Power Apps integration
- Other SharePoint Online innovations.
With SharePoint Server 2019 Microsoft is emphatically stating that on-premises remains highly relevant. Whilst there is rapid adoption of SharePoint Online through Office 365 packages, partially the demand for on-premises still exists because some organisations are unable to move entirely to the cloud, for data sovereignty, legal reasons or otherwise.
So though Microsoft may have initially stated “Cloud first, mobile first,” it has laid to rest any speculation about its moving away from developing server-based products. Recognising perhaps that enterprises have already invested solidly in infrastructure and customisation, for the foreseeable future on-premises is here to stay and SharePoint Server 2019 is an exciting release.