This is a BIG deal!

I have long held the theory that in the earliest days of Bill Gates and Paul Allen, these two guys were frustrated by the difficulties they had as students of Lakeside. They had an intense drive to access computers and would do anything they could This led the two of them, later at Harvard, to understand the importance of Basic as a way ordinary people could interface with computers. When the Altair was introduced, Gates and Alan ported Basic to the first consumer microcomputer. The result was the invention of the concept of universal access to computing.

That battle has continued since then. In Bill Gates’ mind, the battle has never been over gadgets. Even the iPad and smartphone are only important as tools to access a universal web. I believe this concept is part of Microsoft’s design of the Surface. The Surface is less a device than it is the Surface of something … very deep and wide, the web. I expect, if MS has its way, we will see Surfaces on everything. I will be able to read this web post from my refrigerator door.

The battle has been about universal access. Once that meant Basic as a way folks could “talk” to their PCs. Later it was the operating system and MS fought to make Windows and Exchange universal from the desktop to the server.

Now, the line between the server and your wrist computer is being replaced by the cloud. The person, and now the company, that controls access will be the ultimate winner and a historic contributor to human history … well surpassing the role of Gate’s hero JD Rockefeller in creating the petroleum-fueled 20th century.

Now, that battle is being fought over the cloud. There are three real competitors: Microsoft, Google, and Amazon. All other companies, including Apple, are niche players. These three, however, are trying to provide the cloud that everyone uses.

This announcement is Microsoft’s next step in that battle.

The highlights:

• Free storage climbs to 15 gigabytes from 7 GB.
• All Office 365 users now get 1 terabyte of storage, up from the previous 20GB allocation.
• Office 365 Personal subscribers get 1TB of storage for $6.99/month (in the UK, £5.99/month).
• Office 365 Home subscribers get individual storage of 1TB for up to five people for $9.99/month (in the UK, £7.99/month).
• Microsoft also is reducing monthly storage subscription fees for users who don’t want Office to $1.99 for 100GB (in the UK, to £1.99/month) from $7.49/month. It’s dropping the price on 200GB to $3.99 from $11.49.

The pricing updates will take effect in the next month, and current subscribers will automatically be moved to the new prices. Combining the cloud with Office 365, means I can take my work anywhere, seamlessly … all within Microsoft. I also know that all of my work will be kept safe because you can now secure your o365 login with a second factor authentication, and this is something that I would definitely be interested in getting as all of my files are personal and private, and so I don’t want them to be seen by the prying eyes of other people. I don’t know about you, but I think that’s a reasonable request.

Not only that, but you can also add third-party office solutions to your 365 plan. These are often called tools or toolkits and give greater control over the sites that need to be managed, whilst giving users the administrative features they need. There is other software that you can add, though. For example, you could look at adding an active directory reporting system or Saas software.