February 20

Skydrive.. A virtual drive in the sky.. The cloud….

Call it a virtual drive, online backup, safe, secure.. Call it D/R. Call it what you will. But call it by name! SKYDRIVE !

Skydrive is a safe and secure, FREE Microsoft cloud-based application that is used to store, sync, share, access, store, save and collaborate your files.

Using Skydrive gives you free (this means no cost, nada, zip, zilch) Web Based Microsoft Applications such as Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and the ability to create online surveys using the web based version of Excel.

Opening these complimentary Office applications once cached after the first use is in some cases much faster than opening up the software based app on a computer or Mac. What is even  more amazing is the fact that As Microsoft Office products grow and mature, so do your no cost web based Office applications, with no need for you, the end user to do anything but use and enjoy!

For comparison against google, dropbox and other cloud storage please visit this link for the real truth: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/skydrive/compare  this easy to read comparison chart says it all. Skydrive runs circles around the competition.

Skydrive integrates seamlessly into Microsoft applications, your Windows applications,  ws desktop experience, and most importantly your life whether it is personal or business, Skydrive is for you.

Skydrive allows users to save directly from the web, your PC, your shared folder with ease. Super-Ease as in automatically once configured. It is truly a no hassle platform.

For mobile users, applications are available in the itunes store and android market place but for you Windows Phone users, you’ve just found a way and means not only to open and edit your Office files from your phone, save and version back to Skydrive for se on your computer, but you now have a way when you take those precious photos and videos to automatically upload, as soon as you take said photo or video up to your Skydrive account.

I will go over my favorite mobile Skydrive uses, in future, soon-to-come blogs as I drill down and focus on Skydrive, the only cloud based document storage and collaboration outside of Azure that I trust and personally use.

Skydrive allows you to sync across multiple computers and multiple operating systems. Built into Windows 8, a desktop application is available for other and earlier operating systems.

Microsoft’s Skydrive offers at no cost, a whopping 7gb of storage space with the option of upgrading to 20, 50, 100 GB of storage with the most costly upgrade, an ADDITIONAL 100 (One Hundred) gigabytes being extremenly los cost, at only $50 a year.. That’s all.. Personally, I currently use the 50gb upgrade for a total of 57gb of storage for only $25 a year.. That in technology is what we refer to as being.. cheap.. The price.. Not the application..

Once installed and setup, the Skydrive application works on its own, securing your documents, spreadsheets, photos, videos, pdf.’s, and any other file in Microsoft’s data centers whee you can rest assured, this is not the cloud users around the world are afraid of.

All data is transferred y means of  SSL/HTTPS. As long as you, the end user uses best practices with securing the application via strong, complex passwords, difficult-to-answer security reset questions, and even going as far to use Microsoft’s one-time-use codes you have NOTHING to worry about.

I will mention for business practice,f you are in a corporate environment where your documents are legally required tby the United States government to stay within U.S. borders (note: google, dropbox, gdrive, etc. have the same US boundary limitation as well) then you will want to look a bit further up the ladder at Office365, Azure, and Private Cloud scenarios.)

Speaking of Office 365 and Azure, it is important to note.. Skydrive while tempting to try to squeeze into a business model, is made, tailored, and tweaked for personal use. Microsoft has never made the claim, promoted, or hinted  that Skydrive is for a business model.

If you have confidentiality requirements, are PCI HIPAA or SOX compliant then utilize Office365 or look at file storage or Server 2012  Hyper-V Replication garnished with remote access and served with a tastey side of Branchcache for your remote offices and subs.

Be it Skydrive, OPffice 365, or Azure, your data AND your PRIVACY is safe witrh Microsoft (as well as your uptime, clout, and future lottery numbers.. Kidding.)

Stay tuned.. My next series will focus on Skydrive.. The only option for storing, syncing, collaborating, saving, editing and working on your documents safe and securely.

If you have any specific requests or questions regarding Skydrive, send em on!

-Brian Bell

aGeekBlog.com