Data Backup Digest

Microsoft has teamed up with Box in order to promote both of the company’s services; the former for their Office 365 service and the latter for their cloud storage. All business customers who subscribe to the Microsoft Office 365 service will now be given unlimited cloud storage. For those users who already used the Office 365 service this is a brilliant deal. Even for new subscribers, it’s actually pretty cheap too. Prices range from $5 to $15 per user/month and can be adapted depending on the size of the business.

Box previously offered a price of $15 a month for 1TB of storage which is nothing in comparison to this new deal. In fact, Box’s price for unlimited storage was $35 a month and these users will obviously now opt for the lower price with the Office 365 service included.

It might seem confusing as to why Microsoft would offer this deal with a competitor when they have their own cloud storage service in OneDrive. However, this is more to promote the services that each company offers. They are trying to drive business customers their way, to invest in their infrastructure and join the Microsoft brand.

Whether this will prove to be successful remains to be seen. Microsoft has been making a push with its Office 365 package recently as the idea of buying a new Office package every four years is a business model that is showing signs of wear.

Interestingly, Microsoft is also offering 1TB of storage space on its own cloud service, OneDrive, with a sign up for a monthly Office 365 subscription. This deal follows the announcement of Office 365 Personal, the lowest ever pricing the service has received - $6.99 a month.

Office 365 Home users pay $9.99 a month and receive 1TB of storage per person for up to five users. Office 365 Personal ($6.99/month) and University ($79.99 for four years) will get 1TB per subscription.

“Our data tells us that three out of four people have less than 15GB of files stored on their PC,” Omar Shahine said, the Group Program Manager for OneDrive, in a recent blog post. “Factoring in what they may also have stored on other devices, we believe providing 15GB for free right out of the gate -- with no hoops to jump through -- will make it much easier for people to have their documents, videos, and photos available in one place.”

This is no doubt a very good way to get users to experience Office 365. Microsoft will hope that users will find the Office service useful and subscribe to it for a long time, even if they cease to use OneDrive. For Box, it will be the hope of a strong usage of their service that will bring about recommendations and credibility.

Current subscribers of these services will automatically be changed to the lowered prices, meaning that they can begin accessing their new account benefits immediately.

“I do think that if you are a heavy user of OneDrive to begin with and you were already paying for online storage, this could push you over the edge,” said Wes Miller, an analyst at Directions on Microsoft. “You may decide you should stop paying for OneDrive and start paying for Office 365 subscription because you’ll get way more storage for less money.”