I have a hunch that Microsoft is sitting in  Redmond just thinking something along the lines of, “Let’s just give our customers more storage”. And so they did. The Office 365 is really starting to blow out the competition one-by-one. It will be interesting to see if Google will follow Microsoft’s lead and double their storage for Google Apps.

Exchange Online

As if 25 GB  isn’t storage enough for 99.9% of all users I’ve ever known, the mailboxes just doubled. The current standard of 25 GB per user mailbox, is now set to 50 GB. Shared Mailboxes, as well as Resources Mailboxes are going from 5 to 10 GB each. An remember, that these types of mailboxes are completely free of charge. Kiosk user mailboxes are also going up by 2x to 2 GB. The only thing that remains the same is the Site Mailboxes. Microsoft informs, that they expect to finish the roll-out by November 2013.

SkyDrive Pro

The default storage for SkyDrive Pro users, used to be 7 GB. Starting in August Each user will get 25 GB of SkyDrive Pro space and each user can bump their storage up to 100 GB.

Other goddies, which apply in SharePoint team sites as well as SkyDrive Pro:

• Versioning is now turned on by default
• Recycle bin retention is trippled to 90 days of hold
• Upload filesize is now 2 GB/file, up from 250 MB

Lync

Windows PowerShell is now turned on for Lync. Among the capabilities that PowerShell will let you use and the Lync Online admin center will not you will find:

• Managing Exchange Unified Messaging and hosted voicemail policies
• Managing meeting room endpoint devices with a Microsoft Exchange Server 2013 resource mailbox
• Granting client inband policies using pre-created policy instances
• Use Exchange Online cmdlets to extend the capabilities of Lync Online reports beyond the currently available reports in the Office 365 admin center

Read more:

• Introduction to Lync Online remote PowerShell documentation
• List of Lync Online Cmdlets
• Download Windows PowerShell Module for Lync Online (Note: To install the module, you will need to be running Windows PowerShell 3.0 and have installed Microsoft Online Services Sign-In Assistant or be running Windows 8)

Message Center

On August 1st, a new admin service feature called Message Center saw daylight. This Message Center isn’t about Microsoft letting all those email-hungry admins down. They will still send out the usual heap of reminder emails etc. Microsoft will continue to enhance the quality and keep adding features like localization and tenant specific reporting.

[Office 365]