With cloud storage rapidly becoming a commodity, Microsoft has taken the next logical step in the file-syncing bunfight, doing away with storage quotas altogether for paying customers of its subscription Office 365 offerings.
Microsoft began opening up the data-hosting sluices in June, when it gave every Office 365 subscribers’ 1TB of OneDrive storage each. Now even that limit is being removed, and customers will be able to use the service to store as much as they want.
“Unlimited cloud storage will be a feature of every paid Office 365 plan” Redmond
Even including the humble Office 365 Personal tier, which currently goes for $7 (£6) per month or $70 (£60) when billed annually.
Users of the free Office Online version, on the other hand, will still have just 15GB of OneDrive available.
By way of comparison, both Box and DropBox already offer unlimited-storage solutions for businesses, but each has a minimum buy-in of $15 per user, per month, with a minimum number of users to sign up. Both companies’ personal-use plans do have storage caps, as do similar plans from the likes of Google and SpiderOak.
ProDrive is a Mac Application for managing Google and One Drive files in an easy manner. This is one of the easiest way to working on Google Drive on Mac. Users will be able to upload and download files from the app without the help of any web browser. Both companies’ personal-use plans do have storage caps, as do similar plans from the likes of Google and SpiderOak. For its part, however, Microsoft says raw storage capacity isn’t the point, and that it’s OneDrive’s integration with the broader Office 365 offering that makes Redmond’s service stand out from the rest.
For its part, however, Microsoft says raw storage capacity isn’t the point, and that it’s OneDrive’s integration with the broader Office 365 offering that makes Redmond’s service stand out from the rest.
“While unlimited storage is another important milestone for OneDrive we believe the true value of cloud storage is only realized when it is tightly integrated with the tools people use to communicate, create, and collaborate, both personally and professionally,” Chris Jones, Microsoft’s OneDrive corporate VP, said in a blog post.
Prodrive For Google And Onedrive Download
Redmond began rolling out unlimited storage to some Office 365 Personal, Home, and University subscribers on Monday. Getting every customer re-provisioned is expected to take several months, but anyone who’s eager to be early in the queue can sign up at a special website.
Rolling the feature out to business users will take longer. Customers will be eligible whether they’re using the standard OneDrive cloud service or OneDrive for Business – the two aren’t exactly the same – but subscribers to Office 365 plans aimed at businesses won’t start seeing their storage caps lifted until early 2015.
Customers who have signed up for Microsoft’s Office 365 First Release program will be first to get the upgrade, followed by less adventurous subscribers later in the year. Jones said details of the business roll-out will be posted to the official Office 365 roadmap site in the next few days.
Prodrive For Google And Onedrive Free
After my partner managed to lose a memory stick containing some important work related files this week, it made me wonder whether there is still a place in today’s office for these devices which we have used so resolutely for many years.
There are many arguments to say that cloud based file storage services are far more suitable for safe transfer of files than a small device which could so easily be lost and subsequently accessed by anyone who finds it.
Not only the files stored more securely in the cloud, they can then be accessed by any device, almost anywhere, which means you no longer need to remember to carry your USB stick on you to access them.
Of course there are concerns for businesses over the uncontrolled use of cloud file storage so if you wish to allow your staff to use the cloud as a tool to transfer files, a service designed for business is essential. It should also be controlled and managed appropriately.
As a personal tool however there are many options available, most of them free, which will provide all the functionality you need to securely store you files (Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive to name a few).
Many businesses are now putting restrictions in place to block the use of the humble memory stick completely – primarily to prevent the introduction of malicious software or viruses to their networks but now also increasingly to prevent loss of confidential data whether unintentional or otherwise.
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