Using Office 2013, you can directly open and save files to your Skydrive cloud storage account, allowing you to access these documents easily from other computers without having to copy files to thumb drives, email them to yourself, or VPN into the corporate network or Terminal Server. And, what if you don’t have a copy of Word or Excel on the computer you are working on? No problem! Your Skydrive account comes with both that’s fully accessible from the web account. No need to install software on the computer you are on.

What a lot of people don’t know however, is you can sign up for any one of those Microsoft personal email domains with another email account. In other words, you can use your work email to access all the features of the Microsoft email domains including the Skydrive. Mostly this just simplifies things so you don’t have to manage multiple email addresses, maybe passwords if they are the same, etc., and overall just makes the use of this service smoother.

Once setup with the desktop Skydrive app, you can view your files, and open them from a folder in your normal Windows Explorer view on ALL of the computer you work on. Yes, not only does the Skydrive app sync your documents to the cloud, but you can also sync those documents to as many computers as you want. Even if you don’t want to sync the files to the computer you are on, but have Office 2013 installed, you can still directly access the files on your Skydrive. Go ahead and throw a Windows 8 Tablet like the Surface or a convertible such as the Dell XPS 12, and the ease of use and mobility of this gets even better.

A limitation to the free service is that you get 7GB of storage. That’s a lot, but if you do need more, you can buy it from Microsoft. Need an addition 20GB? $10 a year. 50GB? $25 a year. Or maybe you need 100GB, that’ll be $50 a year. That’s really only pennies to pay for the amazing mobility of your data and knowing that if your hard drive dies or is stolen, you won’t lose a thing. And those amounts are on top of the free 7GB, so you’d have 27GB, 57GB, and 107GB respectively.

Bottom line is Microsoft’s Skydrive is by far the useful, practical personal cloud storage option out there and now with the integration to Office 2013 it’s going to become a staple in the Small Business environment.

If you are interested in learning more or how to implement any of this, send us a message.