Microsoft kills standalone SharePoint and OneDrive plans, because they’re not suite enough

Microsoft has slipped out news that it’s killing some standalone SharePoint and OneDrive plans. The software giant delivered the news in a note for its partners, which explains it is “evolving its cloud storage and collaboration offerings and is retiring the standalone SharePoint Online (SPO) plan 1 and plan 2 and OneDrive for …

[simonlb]

“evolving its cloud storage and collaboration offerings"

That's a good euphemism for, 'further enshittifying our cloud offerings.'

“reflects low customer demand for standalone offerings, increased instances of unintended or nonstandard usage, and higher operational costs associated with maintaining these plans.”

'Low customer demand' is probably because these plans weren't pushed as aggressively as the suites so people missed them.

'Unintended or nonstandard usage' will be people choosing these as it's just cheaper cloud storage, not because of the quality of the service.

'Higher operational costs associated with maintaining these plans.' Nope, it's because MS have identified an area where customers product aren't getting price gouged yet, and that needs remedying.

There's probably also not enough AI rammed into these areas either, so naturally this also needs addressing paying for so just sit back, shut up and enjoy the new offerings. We're doing you a favour mate.

[Bebu sa Ware]

'further enshittifying our cloud offerings.'

It's not raining turds already ?

[segfault188]

because they’re not suite enough

No point in sugar-coating the news.

[blu3b3rry]

Presumably Microslop are cancelling these as it was too difficult to think of a way to ram ClippyPilot into the offering.

[Michael Hoffmann]

Great. And I also received yet another email on a price hike for MS 365 (Small) Business.

Glad I'm already working on getting rid of it, but thought "hey, 1TB is fine, maybe I'll keep only that".

F*ck you, MS!

[Charlie Clark]

My biggest gripe with all of the plans, is that there is no simple way of archiving mailboxes from accounts that are no longer required: either you set up something that downloads the mailbox file and you managed storage youself or you keep the mailbox active, or you pony up for a plan with a more sophisticated data retention system.

[Anonymous Coward]

Archive mail

> My biggest gripe with all of the plans, is that there is no simple way of archiving mailboxes from accounts that are no longer required:

Convert them to a shared mailbox and remove the licences. That way you can allocate access for people to manage them as required.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Archive mail

That works technically, but the ICO takes a dim view of doing this sort of thing with mailboxes of former staff - we recently asked them for their view on this and surprisingly got some pretty clear advice (in the past I've usually founf them quite vague). Basically, they don't advise keeping it for more than a month unless there is a very strong reason.

[Kane]

...adds tools including data loss prevention,...

"That's a nice bit of data you got there. Would be a shame if anything were to happen to it.

Know what I mean, guv?"

[JimmyPage]

Drug pushers

really.

Good luck if you have decided to commit to MS - because there's no going back now.

[xyz]

Wish the title read...

Microsoft kills SharePoint and OneDrive, because they’re shit.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Wish the title read...

What is better ?

[Kevin Johnston]

Re: Wish the title read...

I suspect this is like a lot of storage offerings even down to options as prosaic as those self-store units. It starts with good intentions but ends up as the place which stuff goes to avoid the delete function since 'it may be needed one day'.

This type of online storage model is used based on price and simplicity and was probably selected on the basis they already had other MS stuff so why not. There is of course an XKCD https://xkcd.com/1360/ which shows exactly what the stuff stored looks like but the reason it got stored is the same reason it will never be checked. Having recently gone through the process of checking all my digital photos (those that I could find at least) I was horrified to see that in some cases I had 8 copies of the same photo in different locations/drives. De-duping brought the total storage down from almost 100GB to just 16GB. I am sure if I continued that to remove junk images it would be half that figure.

Out of sight storage just encourages junk collecting and everyone is guilty but in this day and age nobody seems to have time to clean it up

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Wish the title read...

"I suspect this is like a lot of storage offerings even down to options as prosaic as those self-store units. It starts with good intentions but ends up as the place which stuff goes to avoid the delete function since 'it may be needed one day'."

Having tried on many occasions to get people to sort out messy files, the reasons / excuses are usually either that it might be needed one day, that they don't have time, or that the files were created by someone who did the job previously and are therefore nothing to do with them (despite it being their area of work). Unless you can get a three-line whip enforced by the management, it's basically a lost cause where many people are concerned.

[David Hicklin]

Re: Wish the title read...

> Having tried on many occasions to get people to sort out messy files, the reasons / excuses are usually either that it might be needed one day, that they don't have time

We had that and on of my final tasks was to go through the files tree and nuke anything that was obsolete - at the end there was not much left. I mean who needs files from 2003 relating to a product long gone and would not even run on systems as far back as windows 7....

[Charlie Clark]

Re: Wish the title read...

Is that a trick question? Why would you want anything like SharePoint?

As for OneDrive – pretty much all the alternatives are better.

[Anonymous Coward]

The cost of Copilot

RAM is hit worst (so far) but all storage prices are rising: the more one side of Microsoft shove the totally unwanted "free" Copilot on us, the more the other side is told to raise our costs to compensate.

[ComicalEngineer]

I have this special backup system. It consists of some spinning rust in small boxs (OK, a couple of them are SSDs).

These drives, including some older 5 inch drives, store my last 25 years worth of work and personal files.

I find that the smaller ones can easily be transported in my pocket and plugged in as and when I need them.

I have never had a requirement to store my stuff in the cloud and use e.g. dropbox if I need to transfer large files.

And yes, there are at least 2 backups for all the important stuff.

[jockmcthingiemibobb]

For non technical end users with BYOD devices in multiple locations. Like it or loathe it, OneDrive just "works".

[Roland6]

Xbox game pass

Can’t belong before this standalone subscription is also folded in to 365 (as a £ add-on).

[Doctor Syntax]

"unlimited cloud storage"

Just like unlimited data plans etc. Either it gets canned once it's too expensive of there's a small print definition of "unlimited" somewhere in paperwork referred to somewhere in the paperwork.

[An_Old_Dog]

Autocratic Microsoft Attitude

Microsoft has an autocratic attitude that it can dictate how people use the MS services they paid for.

If Microsoft cannot imagine it, it is labelled "unintended, non-standard" (and implied, "deviant").

[Anonymous Coward]

How long

How long until they just remove the E3 tier forcing everyone onto E5 (with coprolite of course)?

Of course they'll introduce an E7 tier at that point above E5 so they have something to push everyone up to when they need a revenue boost.

I do wonder if these execs at MS and Broadcom etc have got side bets with each other about who can jack their prices highest without customers rebelling in volume?

It's just a p1ss take now. I'm sure the marketing droids will be out to tell us that we demanded this and we're getting the best value ever and we've never been happier etc etc.

[captain veg]

Why?

Not so long ago I bought a 1TB microsd card for not a lot of money.

Why would I want this cloud thing?

-A.

[Anonymous Coward]

Once Upon a Time

You bought something and it was yours.

If it didn't work as advertised you could go to some consumer protection organisation.

Try telling a youngster that. They won't believe you.