The Sky's the Limit: 5GB of Free Online Storage Courtesy of Microsoft

With its Windows Live suite of products and services, Microsoft is following the general tendency of traditional software solutions migrating online. Offerings under the Windows Live brand are illustrative examples of the new Software as a Service and Software plus Service strategy, a small aspect of both being storage. Microsoft's SkyDrive is nothing more than a password-protected online file storage service that also offers collaborative and sharing capabilities on top of Microsoft's storage space in the cloud. As of the end of the past week, SkyDrive dropped the beta tag and evolved into the gold version, also upping storage from an initial 1GB to no less than 5GB. All completely free.

"You've made two things clear since our first release: You want more space; and you want SkyDrive where you are. Today we're giving you both. You now have five times the space you had before - that's 5GB of free online storage for your favorite documents, pictures, and other files," a member of the SkyDrive team stated.

And indeed, SkyDrive opened up in terms of local variants tailored to approximately 40 markets around the world. "SkyDrive is also available now in 38 countries/regions. In addition to Great Britain, India, and the U.S., we're live in Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Finland, France, Guatemala, Honduras, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Portugal, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, and Turkey," the SkyDrive team member added.

The final Windows Live SkyDrive brings with it not only increased storage and additional localized versions, but also a range of enhancements across the table. The backend of the service has been tweaked in order to scrap any bugs reported while SkyDrive was still in Beta stage. Another area of the online storage service, that Microsoft touched up with under-the-hood changes, is performance. Essentially, promises are that SkyDrive is now faster and more reliable.