Microsoft announced today that it has increased the amount of storage that each user of OneDrive for Business gets from 25 GB to 1 TB. Furthermore, all Office 365 ProPlus customers will get 1TB of OneDrive for Business storage per user as part of their subscription.
OneDrive for Business is basically the business version of OneDrive (formerly SkyDrive) for consumers in that it provides subscribers with a certain amount of cloud-based storage on a per-user basis. But OneDrive for Business is based on robust, secure and manageable SharePoint technology. It comes with all of the business-oriented versions of Office 365, including now Office 365 ProPlus, which previously only provided subscription-based access to the the Office 2013 applications.
When Microsoft first launched these offerings in early 2013, each user got 7 GB of free storage (through what was then called SkyDrive Pro). But in August 2013, Microsoft bumped the base storage allotment to 25 GB. Now it's a full 1 TB.
"We believe Microsoft offers the most complete solution for businesses looking to maximize their employees' ability to create, collaborate, analyze and act – and sharing, storing and syncing are foundational to that," Microsoft's John Case writes in a post to the Office News Blog. "OneDrive for Business is unique because it offers the flexibility of a reliable and secure standalone service, but is also a tightly integrated Office 365 service, offering enterprise-class productivity."
So three things are changing this week:
OneDrive for Business storage jumps from 25 GB to 1 TB. The announcement isn't clear, so I asked Microsoft and have confirmed that this is for all Office 365 subscribers who get OneDrive for Business as part of their subscription (including Office 365 Small Business, for example).
Office 365 ProPlus now gets OneDrive for Business. Previously sold as a subscription-based way to obtain Office 2013 Professional Plus only, the Office 365 ProPlus subscription now gets 1 TB of OneDrive for Business storage too.
OneDrive for Business migration. Microsoft will now help firms migrate their on-premises data to OneDrive for Business. I don't see any details about that offering, but it appears to be more moral support than any sort of wizard or whatever.
