Monday 2 September 2013

Microsoft is doubling the storage capacity of inboxes for those using Exchange Online and Office 365

Microsoft is doubling the storage capacity of inboxes for those using Exchange Online and Office 365. The rollout from 25GB to 50GB is already under way and should be completed sometime in November according to a post on the Office 365 blog.



Customers using Exchange Online Plan 1, Office 365 Small Business, Midsize Business, Enterprise E1, Government G1 and Education A1 are among those that will see the mailbox capacity boost.
Those on one of Microsoft’s premium service plans (Exchange Online Plan 2, Office 365 Enterprise E3 and E4, Government G3 and G4, Education A3 and A4) already enjoy unlimited e-mail storage through their personal archive but now the default primary mailbox size is increasing to 50GB. It is worth pointing out there will be no extra charge for the additional storage and the transition will happen seamlessly behind the scenes.

Elsewhere, shared mailboxes and Resources mailboxes are both increasing to 10GB (more than double) and Kiosk user mailboxes are doubling in capacity from 1GB to 2GB. The size of Site mailboxes remains unchanged, Microsoft said.

The changes come just days after Microsoft tripled the file storage capacity on SkyDrive Pro. Office 365 and SharePoint customers previously were afforded just 7GB of storage but that’s now been boosted to 25GB.

Overall, the new storage limits push Microsoft ahead of Google Drive’s storage capacity that’s shared across Drive and Gmail. One has to wonder if the search giant will take notice and boost user capacity in response