OneDrive for Business vs Team Sites

This is a question I am seeing more and more. I was actually asked this very question today in the SharePoint Administration for IT Pro course that I’m running at the moment. I gave my standard answer but upon later reflection on that I found what I think is a much better, if not somewhat simpler answer to use. So here goes.

So above you can see a typical OneDrive for Business location.

and now above is a typical Team Site.

I believe the simplest answer to the differences between OneDrive for Business and a Team Site is clear when you look at the contents of the sites.

OneDrive for Business is mainly for storing personal documents while a Team Site is for collaborating on documents AND other things like calendars, contacts, lists, etc that are required by a group (i.e. team) of people.

Of course both OneDrive for Business and Team Sites can do exactly what the other does by virtue of the fact they are both SharePoint sites. However, I think the above description is the best way to understand the distinction at its most basic.

The general idea is that for a document an individual wants to work on privately or with a limited number of people, they should use OneDrive for Business. If however, they need to work on a project that requires multiple people’s input and requires multiple elements like calendar’s, contacts, lists AS WELL as documents, then a Team Site is a better option.

What makes the positioning hard at the moments is that all OneDrive for Business users get 1,000GB or storage while a Team Site on starts with 10GB. I’m sure that will change very soon but for now it doesn’t help the whole concept of ‘collaboration’ that SharePoint is about. However, I understand that OneDrive for Business and like products are a good way for businesses to start dipping their toes in the cloud.

So, if someone asks you about what they should be using OneDrive for Business versus Team Sites hopefully you can use the above definition as way to help them understand.

Easier external sharing comes to Office 365

It is amazing what you find when you start fiddling around in your Office 365 console.

If you login as an administrator and select the option external sharing from the menu on the left you will be greeted by the above screen which contains a number of simply on/off controls for sharing your services in one location.

Where it gets interesting is when you select the external users from the menu across the top.

As you can see from the above screen, now as an administrator I can see all the external (non-Office 365 tenant licensed users) who have received invitations to access any of the SharePoint (including OneDrive for Business) sites.

This means now as an administrator you can not only see every external user but you can also remove them all from a single location!

If you now go to the third menu option sites you can see a list of all your site collections and whether they are sharing externally. You can also enable or disable anonymous guest links here.

I can see in the list of sites that OneDrive for Business (My Sites) that it is configured for Share Invitation as shown.

If you place a check mark for and hit the details link which appears on the right you can quick turn off external access for the whole site as well as not allow anonymous links as shown above.

However, here’s the best option in this external sharing option. If you select calendar from the menu across the top you’ll see that you have controls to share calendars via a public URL! YIPEE! Oh, how I have waited for this feature.

There is simply too much to go into on this new feature in this post. I’ll do another one shortly but for all the information you need for setting up external calendar sharing in Office 365 visit:

Share calendars with external users

The final option allows you to bulk control Lync federation with external contacts as shown above.

Having all the external sharing option in one location for administrators will make life so much easier. Previously having to dig through separate SharePoint sites to manage and control external users and sharing was pain. Having a location for not only all external users but also the ability to centrally manage access will be heaven.

However, by far and away the greatest addition is the ability to now easily share calendars with anyone on the Internet via a public URL is HUGE and now provides parity with many other web based services. Hopefully, that ability will also be available via Outlook if it isn’t already.

I’ll dig more into the public calendaring ability and write that up in another blog post soon.

These changes are GREAT news for Office 365 administrators and provide the functionality many have be asking for. Again, well done Microsoft on bringing these features to the product. All I can say is roll on Office 365.

SharePoint Online migration–Limitations

This is a series of blog posts that I am writing covering migration to SharePoint Online. If you haven’t already, I suggest you read my previous posts:
The classic SharePoint migration mistake
SharePoint Online migration – Pilers and Filers

SharePoint Online migration–Start up is key

What I want to cover in this post are some of the technical limitations around SharePoint Online and tools like OneDrive for Business client app when it comes to migrations.
Every product has it’s limitations and these are changing quite rapidly as the service improves. These however are the most important ones you should know about when it comes to migration I believe:
SharePoint Online can be purchased in a number of different ways, whether by stand alone plans (1 and 2) or via a Suite (P, M or E). The following applies:
Storage
a. Team site storage = 10GB + 0.5GB per user. Thus for 10 users you get 10GB + 10 x 0.5GB = 15GB total storage. Team sites are designed for information shared between team members. This is for all plans that include SharePoint Online.
b. Public web site storage = 5GB. Every plan includes a public web site that is designed to be placed on the Internet and for anonymous users to access. This is for all plans that include SharePoint Online.
c. OneDrive for Business storage = recently upgraded from 25GB per user to 1TB per user. OneDrive for Business storage is designed for personal user storage. Initial storage for the OneDrive for Business cannot be pooled and provided to other users or to the Team Site. Each individual licensed users received 1TB for their own usage. This is for all plans that include SharePoint Online.
So for 10 users you have:
Team site = 15GB
Public Web site = 5GB
OneDrive for Business = 10 x 1TB = 10TB
d. All plans support the ability to purchase additional pooled storage that can be allocated either to the Team Site, the external Public Web Site and/or individual users OneDrive for Business (although with OneDrive for Business going to 1TB this may no longer be possible because site collections are currently limited to 1TB, however until this is enabled you can certainly add pooled storage to the 25GB quota for OneDrive for Business).
Site Collections
A SharePoint Site Collection is basically a grouping of SharePoint sites and subsites into a single container for security and policy reasons.
a. Small Business and Small Business Premiums plans (P1 and P2) are limited to a single Team Site Collection.
b. Mid-sized Business plans (M) are limited to 20 Team Site Collections.
c. Enterprise plans (E) including stand alone SharePoint plans are limited to 10,000 Team Site Collections.
d. You can only create a single Public Web Site Collection on all plans.
e. Individual Site Collections are now limited to a total size of 1TB per Site Collection. This means the maximum space you can allocate to a Team Site in P plans is 1TB (i.e. 1 x Site Collection). In a M plan it is 20TB ( i.e. 20 x Site Collections). In E plans it is 10,000TB ( i.e. 10,000 x 1 TB). Thus, the maximum amount of information you can store in SharePoint Online Team Sites is P plans = 1TB, M plan = 20 TB and E = 10,000TB. Don’t forget, we are only talking about the shared Team Site here for each plan and have no included any personal or web site storage.
f. Each plan supports up to 2,000 subsites per Site Collection. Think of the top of the tree as the Site Collection and any site you create under this as a sub site. Thus, you can create 2,000 of these subsites in any site collection. Thus, the total subsite limit in P plans = 2,000 ( i.e. 1 Site Collection), M plan = 40,000 ( i.e. 20 Site Collections) and E plans 20,000,000 (i.e 10,000 Site Collections).
File limits
a. The maximum file size you can upload to any SharePoint Online plan is 2GB per file.
b. Files that contain detectable viruses and malware will be prevented from being uploaded to SharePoint Online.
c. Certain file types cannot also be uploaded to SharePoint Online. You can see a list of those at: Types of files that cannot be added to a list or library. There are about 20 or so and note that EXEs can be uploaded!
d. File names can have 128 characters
e. Folder names can have up to 250 characters
f. Folder name and file name combinations can have up to 250 characters.
Sync limits
You can use the OneDrive for Business desktop to synchronize from SharePoint Online libraries to a desktop. You can synchronize from Team Sites as well as OneDrive for Business storage to your desktop.
a. You can’t synchronize more than 20,000 items in total across all of your SharePoint Online Team Sites and OneDrive for Business inclusive.
b. You can’t synchronize more than 5,000 items from a single site library including files and folders.
c. Open files can’t be sync’ed.
The ability to synchronize documents in SharePoint Online to a desktop was designed for only a small subset of currently ‘in-use’ files. It was never designed for the bulk synchronization of gigabytes and gigabytes of data to individual desktops let alone local network shares. This, I believe is being changed with upcoming versions of the client sync software, however you will find an upcoming post from me on why you shouldn’t be configuring systems in this manner anyway.
Filenames
All versions of SharePoint (online and on premise) have restrictions on what characters can appear in files and folders. This is mainly due to the fact that most of the time you are working with SharePoint via a web browser and some characters have special meaning there (i.e. *, /,:, etc).
Types of files that cannot be added to a list or library
This means if you try and migrate a file of folder that contains one of these it will fail. In that case you simply need to rename it. The list about what characters are not acceptable in files and folders can be found here:
Information about the character that you cannot use in site names, folders name and file names in SharePoint.
Items in a list
Lists in SharePoint (any version) that display over 5,000 items have difficulty being rendered. This is more about the load on the web server and browser than SharePoint. You can overcome this limitation by creating data ‘views’ in SharePoint to restrict what is displayed at anyone time. For more information about this see:
The number of items in this exceed the list view threshold
Other
There are other limits but you are less likely to come across these but I still strongly recommend you read the following article that contains information about the limits around all SharePoint Online plans:
SharePoint Online: software boundaries and limits
Also, make sure you check back there regularly as the service is upgraded over time.
Conclusion
Yes, SharePoint Online including OneDrive for Business does have some limitations and if you are looking to migrate to it then you should know what these limits are before you start doing a migration. However, remember as with all limits these will change and upgrade over time. My expectation is that the next change we will see is the Team Site initial collection jump from 10GB to 1TB or perhaps even 10TB. I also expect the limits around OneDrive for Business synchronization to dramatically increase as they increase the amount of space available for people.
Hopefully this post will give you a better idea of what the limitations are that you should be looking out for when doing a migration to SharePoint Online.

SharePoint Online migration–Start up is key

This post is part of an on going series covering migration to SharePoint Online. If you haven’t already I suggest you read the previous posts:
The classic SharePoint migration mistake
SharePoint Online migration – Pilers and Filers
In this post I’m going to focus on the area that is most important post-information upload to SharePoint Online.

As way of an analogy take a look at this clip from UK Top Gear. Ensure you watch the section from 2:06 to 3:45 and take note.
What it illustrates is that a high performance track day car like the KTM X-bow and many other such high performance cars don’t have a very ‘standard’ starting procedure. It is all very simple when you know but left to your own devices (like James May in the video) you’ll get nowhere but utterly frustrated.
The same applies to a SharePoint Online migration. Why? Because moving to SharePoint Online is a very different environment from traditional files and folders. Things are different (and better) for a number of reasons but if you don’t know how to at least start using SharePoint Online you are going to get pretty frustrated pretty quickly just like if you’d bought a KTM X-bow and no one had shown you how to start it!
In my initial post in this series I noted how that if you want things to stay the way they are with your files and folders in the cloud then SharePoint Online may not be for you. What I also noted was that I believe this to be a very small minority of businesses since most want to receive the productivity benefits of true collaboration and are willing to invest the time to get the most from SharePoint Online.
However, there is nothing more frustrating that buying something new and then not even being able to use it. Imagine you where lucky enough to afford something like a Ferrari 458 Speciale and then you couldn’t even start it. Even though there is whole lot more to ownership than just starting the car, initially after purchase getting some usage out of what you bought is a huge aspect of the experience you will have with it going forward. Having a good experience (i.e. being able to fire the beast up and drive it immediately) makes things more positive, even if you have a few set backs (say curbing the rims) down the track. However, if you have bad experience immediately at the start (i.e. you can’t work out how to make it go) you’ll remember that far more and have a much greater challenging overcoming that initial negative impression. It is simple human nature really but understanding this is also the key to a successful SharePoint Online migration.
In essence what I am saying is that even after all the data has been copied across and categorized the most important part for the success of the project comes immediately after this – getting the users over the initial usage hurdle as quickly as possible (i.e. a few quick wins go a long way). Most users will be apprehensive about things changing. Most don’t trust technology and believe all machines ‘conspire’ against them constantly. This is the challenge the migrator needs to overcome. In short this means training.
Once the data is over and users are about to be unleashed on SharePoint Online you need to make that transition as smooth and easy as possible. If you don’t, chances are the customer will always have a negative opinion about SharePoint Online and you will be starting from behind. You want to ensure the best possible experience. You want to ensure users get up and running quickly. You MUST ensure they can do their jobs better, quicker and easier than before. As with any new technology, that first hill is the largest but once you are over that it is generally all downhill from there.
Like I have said in previous posts, this means the process of migration is NOT complete after merely copying the data across. The migration process is only complete once everyone is HAPPILY using SharePoint.
This means you need to need to develop processes and material around the critical element of user adoption as much as the technical process of actually copying data. In so many instances I have seen, data gets copied but users then get abandoned to work it out for themselves. The chances of that ending with a good experience are almost zero. However, with a bit of planning and TLC the chances of a positive result are very high. Unfortunately, I just don’t see it a lot.
As you will hear me say over and over again, SharePoint is more than cloud storage and should be treated as so. Like any other Office tool you need to learn how to work it, even the basics, so you can help those you are selling it to. Thus, if you are selling SharePoint migration services then you need to incorporating into that site design and adoption training. For most people selling SharePoint this means extending their skill set.
Don’t just drag and drop and run away. Don’t be afraid of it. Invest a little bit of time to reap the rewards. With so much implementation of SharePoint Online being done currently it leaves a HUGE opportunity for those who do it right. Getting the user started is the key and never overlook the fact that making that as painless and simple as possible sets the stage for adoption of the more advanced features of SharePoint as well the deeper integration into the business and that spells business opportunity for those to take it up. As the Top Gear clip illustrates, having a key doesn’t always mean you can start the car!
p.s. I believe in this adoption process so heavily that I created many publications around exactly that. They are not deep dive, they are not aimed at IT Professionals. They are aimed at end users who want to get on the gas with products as soon as they can. I created these because I saw no others in the market.
You can find these at:
http://www.ciaops.com/publications
and any purchase supports the work I do and allow me to create more such guides.

SharePoint Online Check in/Check out

One of the abilities that SharePoint Online has is the ability to ‘check out’ a document. Why would you do that? By ‘checking out’ a file in SharePoint Online you are making the file read only for everyone except yourself (and administrators who can override this if necessary). This means you can continue to work on the document without worrying about others editing it.

So how do you check a document out in SharePoint Online? There are a couple of ways.

Select the three dots (ellipse) to the right of document name. Then select the ellipse again from the menu bar that appears along the bottom of the dialog box. A drop down menu will appear as shown above and from that you can select Check Out.

You can also select the item to ‘check out’ and then select the File tab at the top of the page. This will display the ribbon menu as shown above and from there you can select the Check Out option in the Open & Check Out section of the ribbon menu.

Once you check a file out all users will see a green arrow appear in the lower right of the files icon as shown above.

The person who ‘checked out’ the file can now make as many changes to the files as they want. They can do this either online or offline, updating as many times as they want. Everyone apart from the person who ‘checked out’ the file will be able to view the file as it was just prior to ‘check out’, they cannot however make any edits or updates themselves. The person who ‘checked out’ the file will see any changes or updates they have made to the file.

When the original person who ‘checked out’ the item is ready they can ‘check in’ the item by either selecting the option via the ellipses as shown above,

or via the ribbon menu as shown above.

You will also notice that there is the option to ‘Discard Check Out’. This option will basically revert the file back to its original state just prior to check out discarding any changes that have been made since the file was ‘checked out’.

Once the file has ‘checked in’, you will be prompted as to whether you wish to Retain Check in and whether you want to add any Comments as shown above. Normally you simply add any comments desired and press the OK button to ‘check in’ the document.

After ‘check in’ is complete the file will appear as normal, the green arrow icon will disappear and all users will be able to see the updated file.

By default, with SharePoint Online ‘check in’ is optional however you can make it mandatory via the Library Settings.

You’ll need to have the appropriate rights to make this change. Select the Library tab from the top of the page to reveal the ribbon menu as shown above. From here select the Library Setting button on the right of the ribbon.

Select Versioning settings from under the General Settings section in the top right of the page.

Scroll down the page until you locate the Require Check Out section and set that to Yes and press the OK button to save the changes and update.

Check out with SharePoint Online is a great way to ensure that only one person is working on a file at one time. It can greatly help you simplify the way you go about creating and managing documents. You can also require all items to be ‘checked in’ via Library Settings if desired.

Remember, check in/out applies to all SharePoint Online plans as well as for OneDrive for Business (given that is also SharePoint).

eDiscovery is part of OneDrive for Business stand alone plans

I have been looking at the OneDrive for Business Stand Alone plan recently to try and understand what it is all about. If you haven’t read my initial blog on this have a look at:

First look at the OneDrive for business stand alone plan

Upon reviewing what OneDrive for Business Stand Alone offered at:

https://onedrive.live.com/about/en-us/business/

I noted the fact that it includes eDiscovery as you can see below.

Now, the eDiscovery features is actually a part of SharePoint Online Plan 2 as you can see below:

The conclusion that I came to in my initial blog post on OneDrive for Business Stand Alone was that it was that it had the equivalent feature set of SharePoint Online Plan 1. Clearly, with the ability to have eDiscovery (which is an advanced SharePoint Online feature) that assumption is no longer correct it would seem.

So to test out the eDiscovery feature I logged into the OneDrive for Business Stand Alone Plan and went to the SharePoint admin center and created a new site collection.

When you create a new site collection you can select which template you wish that site based on. As you can see from the above screen shot, one of the options under the Enterprise tab is eDiscovery Center.

Once you have created the site and it has been provisioned you will see it appear in the list of site as shown above.

You can of course navigate to that site, as seen above, and start using the eDiscovery functionality of the OneDrive for Business Stand Alone plan.

This is interesting to me. Why? Because clearly OneDrive for Business Stand Alone is based on a SharePoint Plan 1 (as deduced in the previous blog post) but as you can see now it includes the advanced eDiscovery feature from SharePoint Online Plan 2. So that means what we effectively have here is another SharePoint Online plan here with a different feature set.

Those additional advanced features are great, don’t get me wrong, but they make understanding what each SharePoint Online plan offers far more confusing for people. For example, OneDrive for Business Stand Alone doesn’t include advanced features like form services but does include other advanced features like eDiscovery.

Having eDiscovery as part of OneDrive for Business Stand Alone is a huge bonus and real differentiator with other cloud storage products, however it also means that it is a lot more complicated than competing products. OneDrive for Business Stand Alone is clearly not aimed at end users as are other cloud storage products BUT is does means that people that use and implement OneDrive for Business Stand Alone are going to have to spend some time learning about the product (and specifically SharePoint Online) if they are going to get the most from it.

The great thing about OneDrive for Business Stand Alone is that has much more functionality and power than you expect. However, that could also be its disadvantage if all you are looking to do is save files to the cloud. I personally think the market is moving more to a product like OneDrive for Business Stand Alone for compliance reasons but we are not there yet for most smaller customers who want simplicity over just about everything else.

First look at the OneDrive for business stand alone plan

With the move to OneDrive for Business from SkyDrive Pro Microsoft has also announced the availability of a stand alone OneDrive for Business plan. It is clearly aimed as a ‘Dropbox killer’ so I thought I’d take a look under the covers and see exactly what it is.

I signed up for a trial at:

https://onedrive.live.com/about/en-us/plans/

and for that I received

The sign up process is just like any other Office 365 plan.

You complete all the address details, create an admin login and password and then you are live. This trial was for 25 users of OneDrive for Business.

After creating the admin account you are immediately signed into the Office 365 Administration Portal which is identical to any other plan. However, you will note that the top menu has the items Newsfeed and Sites listed as shown above. These disappear after a short while (obviously some provisioning happening in the background).

When I checked the subscriptions I could see what I expected, 25 licenses of OneDrive for Business.

When you actually check the license assigned to the user you see they have rights to Office Online (the old Office Web Apps) and OneDrive for Business (Plan 1).

Now that’s interesting. Firstly you can remove the ability to view document in a browser by removing the Office Online license but even more interestingly what’s this (Plan 1) thing about? My thoughts on this further on.

Upon returning to the main administration page I saw that Newsfeed and Sites no longer appeared in the menu bar at the top of the page.

So being logged on as the administrator account I thought I’d next have a look at the SharePoint admin center.

To do this you select the Admin option from the menu bar across the top and then SharePoint from the menu that appears.

Doing so takes me to the familiar SharePoint admin center common to both Enterprise and Mid-sized Business plans. What you will also see is that I have three standard SharePoint Team Sites provisioned! Say what? So not only do I get personal a OneDrive for Business for each licenses user but I ALSO get a standard SharePoint Online shared Team Site. More importantly, via this interface I can also create more shared sites it would seem. Interesting.

The other thing to note here is that I have approximately 25GB of free pooled space I can allocate! So each user gets the standard 25GB for OneDrive for Business as you do with any SharePoint Online plan BUT you also seem to get additional shared space as a bonus.

With normal SharePoint Online plans as you find details at:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-au/office365-sharepoint-online-enterprise-help/sharepoint-online-software-boundaries-and-limits-HA102694293.aspx

You only get 0.5GB of additional shared storage per licensed user. Here with OneDrive for Business Stand Alone plan it seems you get 1GB per licensed user. That explains the additional 25GB of pooled space I am seeing. It also indicates to me that all SharePoint plans will soon change to add 1GB per user to shared storage (I wonder how long that will be? Not long I’ll bet).

If I now actually click on the OneDrive option from the menu I get a video to watch and I’m told to wait. This is very much like what happens with OneDrive for Business with any standard SharePoint Online plan.

After a few more moments I am deposited in the familiar OneDrive for Business web interface (like the old SkyDrive Pro in many ways). So this user now has 25GB of personal storage they can use to sync their files.

With the personal space set up I navigate to the shared Team Site and sure enough it comes up like any standard SharePoint Online shared Team Site as you can see above.

My next question is, ‘That’s great, but exactly which SharePoint Online plan is it? 1 or 2?’. To find out I edit the home page and look at the web parts available in the Business Data section shown above.

If I now look at the same location but on an E3 tenant (i.e. that includes SharePoint Online Plan 2), you’ll see there are lots more web parts available in the same area including those for Excel Web Access and Visio Web Access, both exclusive features of SharePoint Online Plan 2.

So, my conclusion is that OneDrive for Business Stand Alone plan is basically like (if not identical) to SharePoint Online Plan 1. Given that it also includes Office Online the plan that it is probably more identical to is Office Web Apps Plan 1.

Here’s where my thinking on what the license saying OneDrive for Business (Plan 1) Stand Alone is all about as I pointed out earlier. My guess would be that we are going to see a OneDrive for Business (Plan 2) Stand Alone that will perhaps include more storage and SharePoint Online Plan 2 as the default Team Site. Only speculation on my part, but it seems logical to me.

Now I do a double check on OneDrive for Business Stand Alone Plan including SharePoint Online Plan 1 by looking at the web parts in the Forms section.

In the same area on my E3 plan (that includes SharePoint Online Plan 2) I see the InfoPath Form Web Part as shown above. So, I’m now pretty confident that OneDrive for Business Stand Alone includes the full Office Web Apps Online Plan 1 in its offering. Bonus!

With other SharePoint Online plans you have a menu item called Sites at the top. When you select that you get a list of promoted sites and what you see is like that shown above from an E3 tenant.

Even though the Sites menu option is not displayed in the OneDrive for Business Stand Alone plan I manually entered in the appropriate URL but was greeted with a 403 Forbidden as you see above. So there is one difference, the Sites URL doesn’t work!

I then attempted to create a public website in the OneDrive for Business Stand Alone plan and it seemed to allow me. However, I couldn’t select a Web Site Address. It seems like that might be blocked but I’ll need to have a fiddle to see whether that is really the case or me just not doing something. But, it certainly seems possible.

There is a lot more to this OneDrive for Business Stand Alone plan than meets the eye and I’ll need to investigate further and report back. However, to round off I took a look at what happens when you want to actually convert the plan to a paid subscription. I had created 2 users and when I wanted to convert I was asked to pay for these two users as well as any additional space. Total cost would have been $5.00 ( 2 x $2.50 ) per month, on special ($10 normally). Pretty good value for what you are getting from what I see.

Summary

So it seems to me that OneDrive for Business Stand Alone on first glance:

– is almost identical to Office Web Apps Plan 1 that includes SharePoint Online Plan 1 and Office Online (the new Office Web Apps).

– provides each licensed user with a default of 25GB of personal storage in their own OneDrive for Business as with any other SharePoint Online plan

– can have additional pooled storage added that can be allocated to any existing users personal OneDrive for Business to take any personal OneDrive for Business up to a current maximum of 1024GB. Again, just like any existing SharePoint Online Plan.

– includes shared Team Sites accessible via the standard SharePoint admin center just like all E and M plans.

– seems to include an additional 1GB per licensed user of pooled storage that can be allocated to either the shared Team Site or an individual users OneDrive for Buiness. Other SharePoint Online plans currently only provide 0.5GB per licensed user (but I get the feeling that will change).

– seems that there maybe additional stand alone plans coming that include more storage and the features of SharePoint Online Plan 2 (i.e. Visio, Excel, Access services, etc).

For the cost, you get a lot of the features of SharePoint Online which is great. However, that still makes it a little more difficult for people to use when compared to other file syncing options like DropBox. However, if you want enterprise functionality and collaboration OneDrive for Business stand alone stands out.

I’ll be doing further deep dives into this OneDrive for Business Stand Alone plan very soon so stay tuned.

OneDrive for Business

There is still a lot of confusion around OneDrive and OneDrive for Business. However, here is a nice video that explains much of the differences and capabilities.

It is perhaps a little long and gets a bit bogged down in some of the details but still very worthwhile if you want to better understand the differences in the OneDrive product.

Microsoft have also announced the availability of the stand alone OneDrive for Business plan:

OneDrive for Business now available as a stand alone service

It seems squarely aimed at competing with DropBox. Here is a comparison of the features available for OneDrive:

OneDrive Plans

And don’t forget that the OneDrive app is available on a number of different platforms, allowing you quick access (and in some cases local syncing ability) to your OneDrive files. You can download the clients apps from:

Download OneDrive

There is still a lot of confusion out there when it comes to OneDrive and OneDrive for Business but once you appreciate they are two completely different services then you can better appreciate the roles they can play. I’m sure I’ll be post a lot more about OneDrive and even updating my SkyDrivePro book to OneDrive but with things still changing so rapidly it doesn’t make sense just yet. Best to sit back and watch all the latest developments as they happen.