SharePoint Online vs On-Premises
| On Premises | Online |
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Feature Comparison
| Category | On Premises | Online |
| Cost Involved | Purchase/Maintain Hardware, Software licenses etc. | Annual subscriptions for Office 365 Plans billed on a per user basis. |
| Infrastructure deployment & maintenance | IT Support Team to deploy/manage farm, latest updates or patches not always deployed. | Microsoft manages the environment and ensures all updates and patches are deployed. |
| Business Continuity (BC) | Dependent on internal capabilities. | Microsoft built-in redundancy and failover for data centers, but does not provide end user backups or data recovery. |
| Product Features | Support for enterprise feature, Office web App (OWA) needs to be installed | Missing or limited features, pre-configured features |
| Customization Options | Full support for server side code and client side code, App usage from OAC and SAS | Full Support- Client Side, Limited Support-Server side, Can use Apps from OAC or SAS |
| Information Security | Dependent on internal capabilities. | Information in MDS meets industry-specific security standards |
| Compliance Standard | Dependent on internal capabilities. | Verified by third party authors |
| Storage needs | Expensive storage devices, Site Collection -More than 100GB, Scalable Storage Size | Cheap storage cost, Site Collection- up to 100Gb, Maximum content in single tenant -O365 plan based |
| Development | Full trust solution can be deployed- Features in farm solutions can have scope as wide as the site collection, web application, or whole farmPublic facing website with much of customization is possibleCustom “Managed Path” allowedMore control can be delegated to power users | Full trust solution cannot be deployed- Only Sandbox solutions possible with scope up to the site collection levelPublic facing website with much of customization is not possibleCustom “Managed Path” allowedMore control cannot be delegated to power users and maxim privilege level is Site Collection level. |
Technical Comparison
| Services | Online | On Premises |
| Search | Limited access to query | Full text Query |
| InfoPath Form Services | Only in E3, E4 and K1 plans | Required License to use InfoPath Form Services |
| Claim Bases Authentication | N/A | Can use SQL , LDAP and AD authentication |
| Managed Accounts | N/A | Provides a Managed Account to user at access the SP Admin Services |
| Usage reporting and Logging | N/A | Provides LOGS and Reporting to check the exceptions and System Report. |
| Alternate Access Mapping | N/A | Provides a map requests where the URL of a Web request received by Internet Information Services (IIS) differs from the URL that was typed by a user |
| SharePoint Health Analyser | N/A | Site collection pre-upgrade health check examines a site collection and then generates a report listing ay potential upgrade issues and how to address the issues |
Pros and Cons
SharePoint On Premises
| Pros | Cons |
| Control Performance | Cost of internal resources (staff, hardware, software, etc) |
| Scale Up and Scale Out | Additional Geographic redundancy costs |
| Reduces Bandwidth requirements | Disaster Recovery dependent on internal capabilities |
| Fully Customizable | Scale Up/Out Cost( SW/HW) |
| Full Server and SQL Database | Patching Servers/farms |
| Migrate as Needed | Extra configurations for External Collaboration |
| Seamless Single Sign on with Corporate Active Directory |
SharePoint Online
| Pros | Cons |
| Uptime 99.99% | More ISP Bandwidth |
| Multiple Data centers | Limited Customizations |
| Geographically redundant | Possible Storage Costs |
| Shorted release cycle | Recovery SLAs |
| Managed Services ( SaaS) | No Server access |
| Pay as you go ( Low Cost ) | |
| Reduced impact on internal IT resources | |
| Scalability |
Source : Cloudally
