Following the November announcement that Microsoft has reduced free storage capacity on its OneDrive from 15GB to 5GB, users will have until the 27th July to shrink their storage on the cloud storage service or face locked accounts and file deletions. Is this a blessing for the world of internet security, positive proof that unlimited is too good to be true or just another cash cow for the global computer giant?

This 67% reduction will affect individual users of OneDrive, who tend to be consumers or small businesses. This is the first cloud vendor to make this move and it will probably not be the last. Microsoft claims that some Office 365 consumer subscribers backed up numerous PCs and store entire movie collections and DVR recordings onto OneDrive. In some scenarios these storage hogs exceeded 75TB per user or 14,000 times the average.

Cybersecurity strategist Orlando Scott-Crowley at email security firm Mimecast said the move should encourage businesses not to put all their eggs in one basket. “This should serve as a warning for enterprise IT departments to the dangers of relying on a single cloud vendor,” he said. So it’s probably best that you don’t put all your business critical data into one vendor, as there will be always be an element of risk.

The financial implications are huge for Microsoft. A Computerworld analysis claims that for every 1% of the free user pool Microsoft converts to paid, this equates to an additional $107 million dollars in revenue. Convince 10% of the estimated free user base to the lowest price option and the company will reap the cloud storage harvest of roughly $1.1 billion each and every year.

Ultimately, the relatively new cloud market is uncharted territory and this move might suggest the technology is maturing. Many will have the view that putting the squeeze on 445 million OneDrive customers by cutting storage limits and raising prices is just another way to make more money. It was only two years ago that OneDrive storage was free and limitless for Office 365 users. Perhaps now is the time to shop around.

Inspired provide their own cloud storage solution, offering a massive 2TB of cloud storage capacity for only £5 per month.