Microsoft rolls out 50GB mailboxes for Exchange Online, Office 365
Summary: Microsoft doubles its cloud email storage capacity for users and streaks ahead of Google Apps. — Liam Tung — After tripling file storage capacity on SkyDrive Pro this week, Microsoft has announced it's doubling …
Context & Ripple Effects
Microsoft’s enterprise cloud-storage positioning pairs the larger Exchange Online mailbox allowance with a confirmed tripling of SkyDrive Pro file storage. It also reopens a corporate-email capacity contest in which Google had expanded its corporate e-mail service in 2007.
The move makes storage a more visible part of Office 365’s bundle, rather than a background technical limit. Microsoft’s earlier SkyDrive storage updates provide the broader backdrop for using capacity increases to strengthen cloud services.
First-order effects
- Exchange Online and Office 365 users receive 50GB mailboxes, reducing the need to manage mailbox limits for employees with large email archives.
- Microsoft improves Office 365’s storage proposition against Google Apps by pairing larger email capacity with expanded SkyDrive Pro file storage.
Second-order effects
- Google Apps faces greater pressure to defend corporate email storage allowances, shifting comparisons between the suites toward included capacity as well as collaboration features.
- Microsoft’s cloud customers gain a stronger reason to consolidate email and file storage under Office 365, increasing the value of the bundled service relative to stand-alone storage tools.
Third-order effects
- If enterprise-suite vendors keep raising included storage, mailbox and file capacity become a bundled competitive lever rather than a separately rationed IT resource.
- The change points toward cloud productivity vendors competing on the total storage envelope across email and files, with infrastructure scale supporting suite differentiation.
The trend: Enterprise productivity suites are turning included cloud-storage capacity into a competitive feature across email and file services.