What does 'end of life' mean?
End of life means that, from April 11, 2023, Microsoft will no longer provide technical support in the event that on-premise servers or SharePoint 2013 services encounter technical problems. So, companies will have to turn to external parties for technical support. Technical knowledge of SharePoint 2013 is no longer as widely available, making experts in the field rare – and expensive. And some problems can't even be solved by external experts, making Microsoft the only one who can fix it. If SharePoint is not available, it can have a huge impact on your business operations. For example, if the server goes down, business-critical documents that aren't synchronized offline will become inaccessible.
Furthermore, your security will be weaker as patches will no longer be released to ensure your SharePoint environment is fully protected. It will also be harder to integrate new features, as this outdated version of SharePoint won't be as compatible with newer features. All of this means organizations must make the switch, particularly if you're dealing with a complex information architecture, a large number of customized components or a huge data migration. After all, it can take months to migrate to a new environment, depending on a range of factors.
So, what can you do about it?
Doing nothing is not an option. It's therefore crucial to migrate to a more recent version of SharePoint, be it SharePoint Server 2019, SharePoint Server Subscription Edition or SharePoint Online. The latter option is the most future-proof, and one that we, as technology experts, would highly recommend.
How can we help you?
Based on our wealth of expertise spanning many years, we have created a roadmap for a seamless migration. To ensure that we take decisive steps, the roadmap consists of three phases.
- We will start with some pre-migration workshops to design the new, future-proof information architecture together. We will list what is already available, what the current architecture looks like, and analyze the pros and cons of the current setup. Once the desired architecture has been established, we will proceed with the actual migration. A standard migration consists of the one-to-one migration of lists and libraries, files and items, authorizations and navigation. Some of the challenges addressed early on in the migration process include the modernization of pages, workflows and customized forms and developments.
- We will then focus on the governance track. To us, governance encompasses policy, roles, responsibilities and processes that define how business divisions and IT teams within your organization work together to achieve your objectives. We added this step to the roadmap as SharePoint Online brings with it additional challenges in terms of collaboration and communication. Our governance track allows us to align business and IT expectations and provide a common language to allow them to better communicate with each other.
- The last step involves user adoption. During training courses, we will show users around the new SharePoint environment to help them get started easily and realize the tool's full potential.
Take action now to ensure continuity
Our experts are here to help! Feel free to contact us at info@inetum-realdolmen.world or +32 2 801 55 55 so we can explore the best way to migrate to a later version of SharePoint.
