Last year, Microsoft officials announced that the next versions of on-prem Exchange Server, SharePoint Server, Skype for Business Server and Project Server would be available in the second half of 2021. The catch: All would require a subscription to get support, product updates and security updates.
Today, July 20, Microsoft is making available a public preview release of the next version of SharePoint Server, which it has named “SharePoint Server Subscription Edition.”
Officials are playing up what they claim will be a key advantage of Subscription Edition: It will be always up-to-date and secure thanks to continuous updates. Users will be able to upgrade to Subscription Edition directly from SharePoint Server 2016 without having to first upgrade to SharePoint Server 2019, they added.
Microsoft is advising IT pros to start reviewing the requirements and features that are coming with the SharePoint Subscription Edition release. Among those features: Support for Windows Server 2022 and Windows Server Core; support for OpenID Connect (OIDC) 1.0; an enhanced People Picker for authentication; support for TLS 1.3 and strong TLS encryption by default. A full list of the coming features and updates is available on the Microsoft Docs site.
Microsoft has not yet made available the planned pricing for SharePoint Server Subscription Edition. I’m assuming that will happen closer to general availability later this year.
The public preview of SharePoint Server Subscription Edition is available here.
