Today the SharePoint Team at Microsoft announced that a standalone SkyDrive Pro client is available to download for Windows machines. The Pro edition of SkyDrive allows users to easily save, sync, share, and collaborate on documents in SharePoint. It is worth noting that the new client, is only compatible with SharePoint 2013 servers and Office 365.
SkyDrive Pro was pre-bundled (although not functional for all users until now) with Office 365 Pro Plus, Office 365 Small Business Premium, and Office Professional Plus 2013. If you have any of the aforementioned Office suites installed on your PC, there is no need to download SkyDrive Pro separately.
To use SkyDrive Pro on your Windows machine, first install the client then navigate to either your SkyDrive Pro Library, SharePoint 2013 software, or Office 365 site document library and select the “SYNC” button to begin the process.
While consumers might not be excited, enterprise users are now able to rejoice in a client that can sync files and take advantage of SharePoint features like collaboration, metadata, workflow, and compliance.
Microsoft is competing against other corporate giants for a piece of the cloud market in both the enterprise and consumer spaces. As many businesses choose to manage their company email via Google Apps while still using full Microsoft Office suites, the company needs to convey the power and ease of integration for using Office 365 with SkyDrive.
SkyDrive Pro’s ability to plug into corporate SharePoint servers and Office 365 allows enterprise users to centralize their data and gives administrators tighter control over what users are uploading to the cloud.
If you aren’t a business user and haven’t yet checked out Microsoft’s SkyDrive cloud Service then I would give it a go. Heavy Microsoft users can easily sync all files across their Windows machines including the Surface RT, while still being able to access and view files on their Xbox 360 and Windows Phone.
Do you use SkyDrive to sync your files to the cloud or do you use a competitor’s service (Dropbox, Google Drive, etc.) to get the job done?
If you are looking to download the SkyDrive Pro client, click here!
Source: Microsoft SharePoint Blog
