Microsoft offers free OneDrive to lure Dropbox, Google Drive, Box customers

Dive Brief:

Until June 30, Microsoft is offering OneDrive for Business services free for customers to finish the "remaining term" of existing contracts with Box, DropBox or Google, according to a company announcement.
The trial period will include file sharing without a Microsoft account needed, help teams manage files, Office 365 and file recovery from accidental deletion or malware.
OneDrive is used by 350,000 organizations and sits comfortably among its closest competitors, Dropbox and Box, in Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Content Collaboration Platforms in July 2017. But unlike Box and Google, OneDrive is not solely available on public clouds, allowing increased accessibility to more customers.

Dive Insight:

Microsoft is vying to become a one-stop-shop for business IT. The company's suite of products are designed to integrate with one another while accommodating miscellaneous applications.

Though Microsoft is working to mitigate issues with syncing consistency and user experience on it different devices and platforms, customers are attracted to the streamlined collaboration capabilities across Microsoft's offerings, according to a Q4 2017 Forrester report.

However, Google Drive is attractive to enterprise customers through its file sharing and ability to work as a standalone service. Still encrypting data remains a point of contention.

With the ability of enterprises that already use other cloud services to experiment with OneDrive, companies are likely to seamlessly tie together Azure, Office 365 and OneDrive. However, a recent report dubbed OneDrive as having the most frequented rate of malware infections on its cloud apps.

OneDrive has been around since 2007 while Google Drive wasn't launched until 2012, making Microsoft's footprint in the market established long before Google's. But it's Box, established in 2005, that still holds much of the market for cloud service platforms. It targets "regulated industries," like government and financial services, with its bundles of security and compliance certifications, according to Forrester.

But in the ultra-competitive market, Microsoft still boasts long-time enterprise customers that are often willing to pivot to use more of its services. Designed to create a universal mode of file sharing across devices and ideal for companies that use mobile devices, 85% of Fortune 500 companies use OneDrive.