Should i use SharePoint or OneDrive for Business?

One question put to me this week has been about Office 365 and whether a client should be using OneDrive or Sharepoint to store files.

At the risk of answering a question with a question i often reply, “how many staff do you have, and how much data do you have?”

Firstly here is a brief official description of each technology.

SharePoint

Microsoft SharePoint Online enables an organization to easily create and manage custom team-focused and project-focused sites for collaboration. In addition, it’s possible to deploy an organization-wide intranet portal used to disseminate information and news across the organization. For a quick overview of other Microsoft SharePoint Online products and technologies, see What is SharePoint?

OneDrive for Business

OneDrive for Business (formerly SkyDrive Pro) is personal online storage for a company’s employees. It’s the place where people can store, sync, and share their work files across multiple devices with ease and security. OneDrive for Business is included in SharePoint Online and can also be purchased as a standalone plan. The OneDrive for Business standalone option includes Office Online. To see which features are included in OneDrive for Business with Office Online, see the OneDrive for Business Service Description.

So, should I save my documents to OneDrive for Business or a SharePoint team site?

In short, if you are a one man band, you can safely get away with just using OneDrive for Business.  You get bags of storage, 1TB and it’s not like you are going to need to share the files with colleagues.  Your priority is to make sure your data has built in redundancy and can be accessed remotely from any device.

However if you are part of a bigger organisation, it’s probably worth making use of SharePoint.  As of writing any SharePoint subscription gives you 10Gb of storage per company, and and extra half a GB per license.  Much less than OneDrive, but the sharing view website capabilities are far advanced.  Sharepoint isn’t just for files, along with document libraries you can also have task lists, calendars, workflows, wikis, and other features that help a team communicate and collaborate.

At Jolly IT we use an on-premise server with the essentials role at the location with the most employees, a sharepoint team site with many lists and document libraries to easily share with our colleagues around the country and OneDrive for Business individually for easy secure cloud storage of personal files.

If you are interested in either of these two technologies, or want to know more about how Office 365 can help your company, call us on 08003317668 or email info@jollyit.co.uk.