SharePoint Increases Storage And Flexibility Options
Several days after Microsoft repaired several SharePoint vulnerabilities they have announced an increase in per file upload limit to SkyDrive Pro, their cloud based storage for businesses. Users are now able to upload up to 2GB per file, a considerable upgrade from 250MB. This decision comes less than a month after deciding to upgrade private Office 365 users’ email storage capacity from 25GB to 50GB.
The move comes as SharePoint is gaining significant clout among the large enterprise community and is based on data reports on client use of SkyDrive Pro. Along with the ever increasing customer base in this multi-billion dollar industry, Microsoft is seeing more users uploading larger documents at a higher rate to SkyDrive Pro while maintaining efficiency and internal-external communication. According to a recent blog post from Mark Kashman, Senior Product Manager on the SharePoint marketing team, “Users will now be able to upload and share larger files like CAD drawings, video files, larger project documents and more-both to their personal SkyDrive Pro and to team site document libraries. And it is possible to upload more than one file at a time via drag and drop, the standard file upload dialog box or via SkyDrive Pro Sync for Windows.”
More importantly, SharePoint Online accepts additional file types to be uploaded such as .exe and .dll. There was initial concern that this opened up the possibility of remote attacks however that potential issue was squashed in the ensuing interview. This is viewed as a major upgrade due to previous flaws as Kashman continued, “For SharePoint Online, our telemetry shows that customers want to store these files in the cloud along with their other content. This change will eliminate a number of sync failures customers have seen due to unsupported file types.”
Two other features that have been improved are the increase in recovery time for the Recycling Bin (extended from 30 to 90 days) and an increase of site collection limit (increased from 3,000 websites to 10,000 websites). The latter feature however will only be available for Office 365 enterprise clients.
