Microsoft’s rebranded cloud storage service OneDrive has gone live. The company was forced to change the name of its Sky Drive service following a lawsuit by British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB).
The service formerly known as Sky Drive will offer 100GB of free storage for a year to the first 100,000 people who sign up.
Microsoft recently revealed its cloud storage application Sky Drive was to be renamed OneDrive after a lawsuit from BSkyB last year claimed trademark on the use of ‘sky’.
The new OneDrive offers new features, including improved video sharing and newly updated apps for Windows Phone, iOS, Android and Xbox.
OneDrive is free for customers up to the first 7GB of storage – enough to store more than 7,000 photos; then customers have the option to purchase storage in 50, 100 and 200GB increments.
Current customers will be able to use their existing SkyDrive credentials to access their files in OneDrive. Additionally, current customers who refer friends can receive up to 5GB of free storage (in 500MB increments) for each friend who accepts an invitation to OneDrive.
“We’ve made it really easy for you to access what you need when you need it by building OneDrive into the latest versions of Windows, Windows Phone, Office and Xbox,” said Patrick Ward, Windows Business Lead, Microsoft Ireland.
“Now you never have to worry about whether you are saving files to the cloud, they are accessible whichever device you chose,” Ward added.
Dark clouds, lost devices
According to an online survey conducted by Harris Poll on behalf of Microsoft, 67pc of consumers would rather lose a device itself than lose all the photos and personal content stored on the device.
If their house was on fire, 61pc of 18-34-year-olds would grab their mobile phone over their wallet/purse.
Some 47pc of women would feel devastated if they were to permanently lose their personal files stored on their devices, and 29pc would feel helpless. Some 23pc of people have previously lost all information and photos on their mobile because it was lost, broken or stolen.
Thirty-one per cent have had their desktop or laptop computer crash with little chance of recovering data.
Cloud device image via Shutterstock
