SharePoint 2013 builds on the architecture and management of SharePoint 2010, but it includes many new features and functions, which can be grouped into the following categories:
Architecture features:
The Request Management feature: enables administrators to create rules that map certain types of requests to specific servers or to a group of servers in the farm, including prioritizing and throttling request types.
The Application Management service: forms the basis of the new application model in SharePoint 2013, providing application license, use and permission controls.
The Machine Translation Service: provides a built-in automated translation service to translate Microsoft Office documents, HTML pages, and other SharePoint content. Translation work is performed by submitting content to the Bing translation service on the Internet.
The work management service: aggregates Microsoft Exchange tasks and Microsoft Project Server tasks for a user into the SharePoint environment, providing users with a complete view of task and work activity information.
In SharePoint 2013, Office Web Applications is a separate server solution that can be deployed independently of an organization’s SharePoint environment.
Claims authentication has been improved and is now the default option for web applications.
SharePoint 2013 relies on the new Server to Server Security Token Service (S2S STS) to authenticate with Exchange Server and Lync Server to retrieve data from that server application.
Search features: The Search service application now performs analytics tasks that were the job of the Web
Analytics service in SharePoint 2010: The Search service now includes a continuous crawl option as an alternative to incremental
Crawls: SharePoint 2013 Search includes relevance enhancements, including promoted results defined by query rules, result blocks showing groups of related results, and relevance adjustments to improve result ranking.
Result sources now replace both federated locations and search scopes.
Mobile features: A new view for mobile browsers that support HTML 5 with automatic browser redirection to the appropriate view.
Device channels enable page customization for specific client devices based on the user agent string.