Top Reasons to Upgrade to SharePoint 2013

If your enterprise is using a cloud SharePoint service, such as Microsoft 365, then you are already using SharePoint 2013. Other companies are in the cloud but manage their own SharePoint environment or have on-premise SharePoint farms. At my company, we have special requirements that force us to use on-premise farms also so you are not alone.  Hopefully you are running SharePoint 2010 by now and are considering the upgrade to SharePoint 2013. 

Here are the top 3 reasons you should upgrade:

1. Cross Browser Compatibility
• SharePoint 2013 comes with cross browser compatibility out of the box.  You can now use Firefox and Chrome to interact with aspects of SharePoint that were never allowed before such as explorer view and data sheet view. In addition, pages are mobile device friendly to make SharePoint accessible from any device on your network.
2. Intelligent Search (Incorporation of Fast Search)
• Search in SharePoint 2013 gets smarter as Microsoft rewrote FAST search into the environment at no additional cost. One of the most notable improvement is that your results actually gets better as people use the tool. The order of the search results utilizes click troughs similar to how search engines like Google work today.
3. My Sites Upgrade with Social Integration
• I think the biggest "buzz" about SharePoint 2013 is focused on the enhancements to My Sites and increased usage of social features like Microblogging. Microsoft upgraded their SharePoint Workspace software and branded it as SkyDrive Pro.  Similar to how SkyDrive is cloud storage on the internet, SkyDrive Pro is your cloud storage on your intranet and saves files to your farm's My Site documents. The feeds section of your My Site now aggregates the information from people and groups you are following into one location.

In addition to the notable benefits above, Microsoft has made many architectural changes in SharePoint 2013. The new development of apps using the app model requires your apps to live on a separate web server as not to effect the farm. The use of sandbox web parts is also being depreciated. This is all being done to enhance the cloud instances of SharePoint, simplify upgrades, and decouple SharePoint customization.

Microsoft's latest release of SharePoint 2013 takes SharePoint to the next level. Since its first release it has evolved from a document repository to a full enterprise content management platform with social integration and the ability to perform business process management. If any of the three items above are in your corporate strategy then I would suggest moving forward with your upgrade planning.