4.30 PM Friday, 29 March 2024
  • City Fajr Shuruq Duhr Asr Magrib Isha
  • Dubai 04:56 06:10 12:26 15:53 18:37 19:52
29 March 2024

Microsoft's unlimited cloud storage could set off new war

Office 2016 for Mac is now available in 139 countries and in 19 languages. (Reuters)

Published
By Joseph George

Microsoft’s latest announcement to offer unlimited cloud storage to its customers could trigger a new round of cloud war.

The company last week launched a new plan to offer unlimited cloud storage, thereby removing all limits to how much you can store online.

Subscribers of Microsoft Office 365, be it personal or business users, students or universities, will be able to avail this offer.

Writing in a blog post Chris Jones, Corporate Vice-President, OneDrive & SharePoint, last week pointed out that the unlimited storage will be rolled out to all Office 365 customers at no additional cost.

“We’ve started rolling this out today to Office 365 home, personal and university customers. The roll out will continue over the coming months,” he said.

According to him, the rollout will be complete by 2015. “For OneDrive for Business customers, unlimited storage will be listed on the Office 365 roadmap in the coming days and we will begin updating the First Release customers in 2015,” he added.

OneDrive used to offer 7GB of free storage and an additional 3GB for uploading your photos from your smartphone.

An additional 50GB is otherwise priced at $4.99 per month, while 100GB of OneDrive cloud storage costs $7.49.

The announcement is expected to further trigger a cloud war among competitors, including Google and DropBox.

Earlier in April, Google had slashed prices of its cloud storage solution by almost 80 per cent when it introduced 100GB storage for $1.99 per month. The same package was priced $4.99 earlier.

Similarly, you can get 1TB storage for $9.99 compared to $49.99, a reduction of almost 80 per cent.