Support for SharePoint 2013 Is Ending – What Are Your Choices?

Introduction:

The end date for the extended support for SharePoint Server 2013 is just around the corner on April 11, 2023. Due to SharePoint 2013 end-of-life, you are left with only two safe options if your organization is still running SharePoint 2013- 

• SharePoint 2013 to SharePoint Online Migration
• Upgrade to SharePoint 2019 or SharePoint Server Subscription Edition on-premises 

One more choice, albeit not a smart one, is you could go on using SharePoint 2013 unsupported, but that comes with countless risks. If you think opting for an upgrade or migration project need not be right at the top of your to-do list now, think again. You will find the risks associated with running unsupported quite alarming.

Risks of using SharePoint 2013 without support 

 Here are just a few of the significant risks you could face by remaining on SharePoint 2013- 

No more technical support 

Kind of obvious, isn’t it? But we just have to reiterate it. You will cease to get technical support for SharePoint 2013 after April 2023 without incurring quite expensive additional charges for post-life support. What’s more, platform utility too will be impacted as data integration will get severely affected as users will no longer be able to make periodic updates or receive direct support. 

Reduced security 

Till the time a product is under support, security update patches are deployed on a regular basis to deal with the constantly evolving strategies used by cybercriminals.  End of support automatically means the end of those patches that protect you from threats. Your organization will be vulnerable to security breaches without up-to-date patching support from Microsoft. 

Integrating new features could become a problem 

If you are considering adding new features to your system, you could run into some unpredictable challenges as the obsolete version of SharePoint is sure to have compatibility issues. 

Business disruption 

The solutions that are critical to business users may become increasingly unreliable and prone to failure over time. If and when there is a failure, you will experience an extended downtime with an unsupported fix (if a fix is possible at all), without any support from Microsoft. Once the support from Microsoft has ended, the protracted and often frantic efforts to reach out for post-life support or chalking up plans internally to deal with the downtime will increase the duration of the downtime, while your system gets affected. 

It is important to make up your mind about the migration or upgrade weeks, or preferably, months before the SharePoint 2013 end-of-life date in 2023. This is because SharePoint offers many customized features that may take some time to shift to a new platform completely. 

As a Microsoft solutions partner with over two decades of experience and expertise in Microsoft Technologies, we deliver SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, and Power Platform solutions that help IT and Business leaders like you to enhance the way their organizations function and increase business productivity and efficiency. 

We hope you found this blog useful in understanding the risks of continuing with SharePoint 2013 after Microsoft ends its extended support in 2023. Please reach out to us so that we can put our decades of experience and expertise in SharePoint migration services and Microsoft technologies to help you in your organization’s Digital Transformation journey.