What is SkyDrive Pro in SharePoint 2013?

Sky Drive Pro is a professional library; it is a place to store the work documents and other important files. SkyDrive Pro as the name suggests is similar to the conventional SkyDrive that we are all familiar with. It is in fact considered to be the SkyDrive for business. As in SkyDrive where you can store and share files with other people and also access the documents on the go from a mobile device, similarly with SkyDrive Pro it is possible to view, share and browse files from a mobile device. These SkyDrive Pro files are stored along with your company's SharePoint Server's files as per it's set up. It is possible to synchronize files and folders in the SkyDrive Pro and other SharePoint libraries along with the personal computer and can be made available off line too.

SkyDrive Pro is a service and is available through Office 365 and SharePoint online account. Infact SkyDrive Pro is not a part of SharePoint 2013 but instead is shipped with Office 2013. Each user is alloted a space of 7GB for the storage of personal site content which would seem more that enough for the average business needs . However in cases where the SkyDrive Pro library files which hosted with the SharePoint servers are on-site the space alloted for the Sky Drive Pro account may differ.

All this can get a little confusing even for a SharePoint Consultant. The confusing factor being that there already existed a SkyDriveand now there is a SkyDrive Pro which is similar to SkyDrive in several respects but is associated with SharePoint. To understand this better SkyDrive is explained here and the difference is made a bit more obvious. SkyDrive as most of us already know is a free to public account attached to your Microsoft email account be it Hotmail, MSN or Outlook.com. SkyDrive stores the user files in a cloud where Microsoft takes care of the hosting along with the email. In fact it is quite similar to Dropbox. One can store private files and share files with others . These files include documents as well images to even applications, in fact just about any thing. It is also possible to view these files over the mobile device. Hence we now know that SkyDrive and SkyDrive Pro are two very different services provided by Microsoft.

There is yet another confusing factor as far as SkyDrive Pro is involved. The SharePoint feature of 'MySites' became quite popular with SharePoint 2010. This feature allows users in an organization to have a personal environment. There is a link on the 'MySites page of SharePoint like 'SkyDrive'. I would like to mention that this is not SkyDrive Pro rather is the simple SkyDrive that is freely provided along with you free Microsoft email account (hotmail, msn). SkyDrive Pro is actually a document synchronization service.

All this can still be very confusing if one tries to figure out oneself. Thus it is best to consult a SharePoint Consultant to understand all the new features of SharePoint 2013. SharePoint Engine provides SharePoint Consulting services are fully capable of guiding you through the different new features of SharePoint 2013 besides which they have more to offer.

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