Microsoft announces standalone OneDrive for Business plan available on April 1 for $5 per user per month

In addition to Office 365 news revealed at its SharePoint conference, Microsoft today also announced a standalone OneDrive for Business plan. Starting on April 1, businesses can purchase OneDrive for Business for $5 per user per month (25GB of storage per employee) without a SharePoint or an Office 365 subscription.

The company also plans to launch two promotional offers from April to September:

• For all customers: $2.50 per user per month in all licensing agreements/programs.
• For Office with SA customers and Office 365 ProPlus customers: $1.50 per user per month, agreement types included Open, Enterprise Agreement and MPSA.

The standalone subscription offers offline sync, access from multiple devices and platforms, as well as options to add Office 365 services. That’s exactly what Microsoft wants: yet another way for businesses to subscribe to its software-in-a-cloud. The company today also introduced SharePoint 2013 Service Pack 1, which amongst other improvements, adds new admin controls to “turn on” OneDrive for Business in the cloud directly from the admin console.

See also – Microsoft SkyDrive becomes OneDrive, gets camera backup for Android, real-time co-authoring, and easier video sharing

Image Credit: Microsoft