OneDrive for Business Detached from Office 365 and SharePoint Online

At the SharePoint 2014 conference in Las Vegas, Microsoft made some announcements about the new reveal of OneDrive for Business (formerly SkyDrive Pro).

Beyond some additional user experience features and enhancements to enable easier access to files for Office 365 and SharePoint customers, Microsoft stated plans to make OneDrive for Business subscriptions available as a standalone purchase.

What does this mean?

In the past, only customers already paying subscription fees to Microsoft for Office 365 and SharePoint Online were able to have access to the business side of the file storage service. In addition, only those customers could also purchase additional storage if needed. The announcement at the SharePoint conference means that any company that would like to utilize Microsoft for file storage and sharing can opt to purchase a subscription just for OneDrive for Business.

The standalone license gives businesses 25GB of storage per employee and enables the option to purchase more storage. April 1, 2014 marks the date when the OneDrive for Business standalone offering will commence. To celebrate the launch, Microsoft will be providing promotional pricing of $25.0 per user per month. The promotional pricing will last from the launch date until September 2014.