In the present society with selfie obsession and smartphones enabling people to instantly create thousands of pictures, it is hardly a surprise that someone asks: Where do you store all this stuff? This question might seem flimsy, but it can easily become a chore. To combat this, a multitude of companies want to flood the market with an assortment of free and fee-based cloud services.
The latest product of this want to fill the need for space competition, on Monday, Microsoft announced that it is offering OneDrive cloud storage with intent of more than just doubling its free storage space. Microsoft is also raising the storage limits, which are inclusive of its varied Office 365 subscriptions. The changes are going to go into effect by the month of July.
The highlights include:
· Free storage up to 15 GB as opposed to earlier 7GB
· All Office 365 users will have access to 1 terabyte of storage from previous allocation of 20GB
• Office 365 Personal subscribers will have access to 1TB of storage for $6.99/month (in the UK, £5.99/month)
• Office 365 Home subscribers will have access to individual storage of 1TB for up to five people for $9.99/month (in the UK, £7.99/month).
The monthly storage subscription fees for users who do not want Office will be reduced to $1.99 for 100 GB (in the UK, to £1.99/month) from $7.49/month. Similarly, the users will be now charged $3.99 for 200 GB as opposed to paying $11.49 earlier.
The prices changes will take effect in July. Microsoft said the current subscribers should be moved to new prices automatically. It is said that while on the surface, this sounds like the “race to the bottom,” Microsoft is catching up to Google Drive, which also offers 15GB of free storage to its users. Box and Dropbox on the other hand offer 10GB and 2GB free storage respectively.
Angus Logan, Microsoft’s head of product management and marketing for OneDrive said, “If companies can successfully layer other products and services on top, that’s a more compelling business”. Logan continued by saying, “Storage isn’t super interesting. What we build on top of storage is.”
He further added, “We’re not trying to just be in the storage game where we break even because storage is the only hammer we have to swing,” he continued. “But if we can say that we want to deliver productivity across all your devices — and it also comes with cloud storage — then it really changes the game from being focused only on storage.”
For Microsoft, this is a chance to pursue people to use its free cloud service to upload and sync files to contemplate to use Office, one of the company’s largest franchises. According to execs, the storage working so closely with the Microsoft Office apps gives the business an edge over its competitors that only offer storage.
The OneDrive service was initiated over 2 years ago as SkyDrive. The company had to change the name after a court ruled that Microsoft had infringed on a trademark, which the British Sky Broadcasting Group owned.
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