Good news this morning for those using SharePoint 2013 and SkyDrive Pro for business collaboration and content storage / backup. Microsoft announced the news today (okay, technically yesterday) over on the Office 365 blog:
We are pleased to announce that the SkyDrive Pro apps for Windows 8 and iOS are now available in the Windows Store and Apple Store respectively for SharePoint Online users in Office 365. After signing in to your Office 365 account, you can access, view, and upload your documents from anywhere.
You can use the SkyDrive Pro apps to view documents in your SkyDrive Pro folder, select specific content to take offline when you are traveling or have low bandwidth, organize your content by creating new folders, and upload new content and share with others.
From a strategic perspective, the same-day release of Apple and Windows apps affirms a real commitment on their part to cross-platform interoperability with iOS– still the leading tablet/slate OS by a long shot– and that’s good news for users of any stripe. Most people just don’t care about the old “Mac vs. PC” argument and just want the ability to use Office (which they like) on their iPads (which they also like).
Here’s some quick thoughts on the practical implications of this announcement:
- “Access, view and upload” is great news and more than what we’ve ever seen before from an “Office on the iPad” or phone perspective. Great stuff!
- The flip side: “access, view and upload” doesn’t include “edit”. There’s a reason for that and it isn’t form factor. The creation/editing experience is intrinsically richer on the PC and Microsoft has a vested interest in keeping it there.
- These apps are for SkyDrive Pro for Office 365 users only. It’s not for on-prem SP 2013 and it’s not for the consumer SkyDrive service.
- Yes, the absence of Android is unsurprising. The Microsoft/Google divide isn’t being bridged anytime soon. This is the elephant in the cross-platform room, and it’s not going away just yet… but who would have imagined Microsoft building apps for iOS back in 2005? Progress is progress if you ask me.
