The Major Competitors Of Skydrive

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

SkyDrive

In this report we have evaluated and compared Skydrive with other Cloud storage services namely Dropbox and Google Drive. We list the features of Skydrive with its pros and cons. We find that for Windows users Skydrive is the best choice.

Introduction

People now work on multiple systems: tablets, laptops and smartphones. Maintaining consistency amongst them is one of the major challenges in such distributed style of working. Cloud storage services provide a good platform to share data over multiple systems. However, today a large no. of companies provides these services and each claims to be the best. With so many services available it becomes difficult for a user to decide which one he should opt for. Hence, in this report we have tried to compare the three most prominent cloud storage services available in the market today, namely, Skydrive, Google drive and Dropbox. Our major focus is on Skydrive and we evaluate its various features and list out its advantages and disadvantages.

SkyDrive is one of the major file hosting service provider. Users can upload and sync their files and can also access these files from a web browser or from any other local device connected to internet. The user has an option of keeping these files private, sharing them with the contacts or making them public.

SkyDrive provides 7 GB of free storage for the new users and for the users who had Microsoft account prior to April 22, 2012 the free storage space is 25 GB. Additional storage space can be purchased. SkyDrive desktop application is available for Microsoft Windows and OS X. Official SkyDrive client is also available for Windows Phone, iPhone, iPad and Android users. [1]

Features [1]

Office Web Apps: It allows users to create, view, edit and share Word, Excel, Powerpoint and OneNote documents. The office web apps do not have all the features of Microsoft Office, but is enough for simple editing purposes. The users can also see the version history (like SVN) of the documents saved in SkyDrive.

Microsoft Office Integration: Users of Microsoft Office 2010 and above can use the local Microsoft Office to edit the SkyDrive documents. In case of collaboration, the changes made by other users can be seen in the local Office application. In case of conflict, the user saving the document chooses which conflicting version to keep.

Email Integration: SkyDrive integrates with Outlook.com i.e. it allows users to upload file in outlook email to SkyDrive.

Social Network Integration: Skydrive allows user to share the documents quickly with contacts in social network.

Other features: It supports non-Office formats like pdf and odf , embedding documents into webpages, location and people tagging in photos, photo slideshows, Bing’s Save and Share feature to search the version history in skyDrive etc.

Comparison

Google drive and Dropbox are the major competitors of skydrive. We compare some of their features below.

Skydrive

Google Drive

Dropbox

Initial free space

7 GB

5 GB

2 GB

Paid storage (100 GB)

$50

$60

$99

Windows, iOS, Mac Android support

Linux, Blackberry

Version tracking

Windows phone client

Single File size limit

2 GB

5 GB

2 GB

Remote access

Simultaneous editing online

View office files online

Pros /Cons

Platform support: One of the main disadvantages of Skydrive is that it is not supported by Linux. Linux does not support even Google Drive. Hence major portion of linux users use either Dropbox or other services.

Using office apps: For Gmail (which is also used in IIIT D) users, office apps provided by Google Drive are more preferable since they can easily be shared and multiple users can simultaneously work on it. We can access them right from our mail and do not need to log into Skydrive and then access its apps.

However if we need are preparing formal documents/ presentations Skydrive apps are preferable since they provides most of the features which are provided by Microsoft Office on our PCs. Also if we have prepared documents using MS Office and then open them using SkyDrive they will open seamlessly without any loss of formatting. However we many a times lose formatting when the same document is opened using Google docs. Another major advantage of Skydrive is that it can easily be integrated with MS Office by just clicking a button. Multiple users can work on Skydrive apps and then by just clicking the integrate button the same copy will be opened on their local machine.

User interface

Skydrive apps present the same interface which the users see in MS Office (same ribbon which consists of formatting features). So users who regularly use MS Office will find it more user friendly. However not many additional features are provided by it as compared to Google docs and so we feel that Google Docs provide a cleaner and uncluttered interface comparatively.

Dropbox does not allow for simultaneous editing of documents and neither provides any office apps.

Remote access: We found this feature really useful. You can remotely fetch any file from your PC even if that file is not present in your Skydrive. For this your computer needs to be running and connected to internet with the Skydrive application on.

Future Market scope

Microsoft is trying to increase the market share of Skydrive by pre-installing it in Windows 8 and integrating it with all its services. So users using windows 8 PC or phones can easily start using it without downloading anything. Dropbox on the other hand uses referral system to increase its market share. It provides the referrer additional storage and this acts as an incentive for users to share it with as many other people as possible. Dropbox is also giving free storage upto 50 GB to people buying Samsung or HTC phones and has a larger market share on mobile devices as compared to Skydrive. Google drive is not very prominent on mobile devices.

Winner

We feel that SkyDrive is the winner out of all the three services. It provides the maximum free storage, has all features of Dropbox and Google Drive. A large majority of people use mobile devices and Skydrive seamlessly integrates with them. Google Drive supports few mobile devices whereas Dropbox does not provide office apps. Skydrive has incorporated most of the features provided by other cloud storage services.