There is a very steep trendline toward near-zero pricing for file sync-and-share storage. Basically, giving away unlimited storage is now table stakes in the industry, as I said in June (see The price of cloud file storage is trending toward zero).

In the recently released Sector Roadmap on that market, I summarized recent price-cutting announcements:

Near-Zero Storage Cost

Here are a few recent events showing falling storage prices and the new normal of unlimited storage with business or enterprise offerings:

• On 16 July 2014, Box announced that the “business” tier of its for-fee offering now has unlimited storage for $15/user/month, just as the “enterprise” tier had already done.
• Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive now start with 15 GB for free users, and Google for Work offers unlimited storage for $10/user/month.
• Apple iCloud Drive — coming this fall — will offer 200 GB for $3.99/month. We’ll see if the company revises that number down it gets closer to release.
• Dropbox for Business has always offered teams unlimited space, although it starts the team with 1TB for 5 users and increases space from there as needed. We’ll see how it responds to the downward price pressures on the per user/per month side of the equation.
• Amazon has entered the market with Zocalo. Its starting point is $5/user/month, including 200 GB of storage. We’ll see if the company shifts its plan to unlimited storage by the time the product is fully launched.

And today I received a press release from Syncplicity, with the newest update in the pricing wars, which included these announcements (my comments are bracketed):

• Syncplicity Enterprise Edition, our premium offering, now includes unlimited cloud storage in addition to allowing unlimited on premise storage using our policy-driven hybrid cloud.
• Many customers told us that they wanted an enterprise-class sync and share solution at an extremely economical price so they can get started quickly and satisfy the needs of smaller workgroups and departments. Our new Syncplicity Department Edition fits the bill!
• For small and many mid-size businesses, cash is king, and storage that you don’t use doesn’t cover expenses. With our pricing update to Syncplicity Business Edition there is no longer any reason for a SMB to have to rely on free consumer products or freemium business solutions to get all the power they need for their users and IT.
• Syncplicity Personal Edition is a great way for individual users to access Syncplicity and for our business customers to enable effortless and secure external collaboration. We’ve increased the amount of free cloud storage you get and made it more economical to buy additional storage. [Free storage limit has been goosed up to 10 GB from 2 GB.]
• Secure mobile editing of Microsoft Office Documents and annotation of PDFs, previously only available in our paid business plans, is now available in free and paid personal plans. This means you can now edit and present Microsoft documents, and annotate PDFs (such as digitally signing contracts) on Syncplicity apps for iPhone, iPad, and Android without needing additional apps or having to navigate outside Syncplicity to make file changes. Every file change is backed up in real time whenever it is edited on your mobile device using Syncplicity.

The new pricing changes can be found on the Syncplicity pricing page.

Syncplicity’s move follows the general trend: file sync-and-share is becoming free, and the money being paid for a subscription is really for other services and apps, like Syncplicity’s capability to edit Office docs securely on mobile. But I think the reality is even those sorts of capabilities will soon be commoditized, just like storage is. The future battle will be about better ways to connect people, because that’s where value is created.