Data Backup Digest

Dropbox, a highly popular and prolific file hosting service headquartered in San Francisco, California, has been hosting user files on public and personal clouds ever since the cloud became mainstream. Accessible through nearly all major operating systems, web browsers and mobile devices, the file hosting service provides its users with a dependable, efficient and straightforward way of backing up their data or sharing files with friends or coworkers. As such, their latest announcement should come as no surprise.

Starting immediately, users of Dropbox and Microsoft Office – including Word, PowerPoint and Excel – will be able to edit their Office files through the Dropbox interface. For those who access Dropbox through a web browser, this means full support for the editing and saving of Microsoft Office files. Microsoft had previously announced their plans to support popular cloud services, including that of Box and iCloud.

Accessing Dropbox’s new functionality is simple and straightforward, and it can be accomplished with just a few clicks once a user has opened up a preview of their document. The feature will be available to all Dropbox for Business customers who have active Office 365 licenses, as well as users of Dropbox Basic and Dropbox Pro. Additionally, users can create a free Microsoft account to enable the new functionality.

To complement the new feature, users are also given the ability to save their new files directly to Dropbox, which can be accomplished without ever exiting Office Online. With a current quote of 35 billion Office documents currently in storage on Dropbox servers, one can only expect this number to grow exponentially after the recent announcement.

Dropbox recently made the news when one of their top executives, Ilya Fushman, signed with Index Ventures: one of Dropbox’s top investors. Fushman will be replaced by Rob Baesman, who will now lead all operations related to the Dropbox for Business line. According to an official spokesperson for Dropbox, the move has been in the works for quite some time now.

Once you factor in some of Dropbox’s other upgrades, which include enhanced document load times, improved file sharing capabilities and a new, redesigned GUI, and it’s safe to say that Dropbox is committed to their customers. Moreover, all of the recent news solidifies the fact that Dropbox is ready to push their service well into the 21st century.

The recent upgrades and improvements to their service bode well for Dropbox, who has found themselves as one of the top competitors of Google’s proprietary online office service, which has provided native support for cloud-based editing and saving of documents ever since its inception. With that in mind, Dropbox’s new partnership with Microsoft might have been more of a necessity rather than strategy.

For more information on Dropbox, or to open up your own account with the popular file hosting and sharing site, interested parties can visit their website at www.dropbox.com. To find out more information about Microsoft, including Office Online, Microsoft Office Suite or any of their other products, please visit www.microsoft.com.