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With OneDrive for Business and SharePoint offering centralized storage facilities and so many similar benefits, many users are in doubt regarding which is the best for them. Even though both these platforms are from Microsoft, they are not the same. If you’re confused about whether to proceed with SharePoint or OneDrive for your users, you must learn about them and the difference between the two platforms. It will also make you familiar with the challenges and opportunities associated with these cloud-storage services.
In this article, we will compare SharePoint vs OneDrive for Business and discuss their similarities and differences.
What is SharePoint
Microsoft SharePoint is a complete collaboration and content management application for enterprises with facilities like versioning, workflow, permissions, co-authoring, intranet, publishing, and more.
SharePoint can be used to make company websites, create and store various company documents, and also create web apps. Employees can view and access the company website from anywhere and download essential documents.
What is OneDrive for Business
OneDrive for Business from Microsoft provides a centrally accessible storage for the entire organization. Users can store and share data as per organizational needs. With facilities like video conferencing, real-time communication, channels, chats and more OneDrive for Business is more than just a storage facility. However, it doesn’t have marketing resources like social media and websites, which are considered very essential nowadays. So, it is just a content storing and sharing application.
SharePoint vs OneDrive for Business – How are they similar?
It is not easy to clearly mark the boundaries between OneDrive for Business and SharePoint. Both OneDrive for Business and SharePoint act as a data storage and sharing platform, providing access to information and are available on the cloud. SharePoint as well as OneDrive, both support features like co-authoring on documents, sharing, versioning, access control, etc.
Now the question is: When they have so many similar functionalities to serve, why are they not represented as a single product? Why did Microsoft release them as two different platforms? Let’s understand this.
SharePoint is a complete collaboration product, whereas OneDrive is merely a data storage cabin for you and your team. SharePoint provides dashboards, tasks, notifications, calendars, etc., along with the facilities for intranet and company portals to distribute information.
But while looking for a collaboration platform, administrators are always confused about which one to go for – SharePoint or OneDrive for Business, or both together? So, we will go through their differences in detail.
- Specific users vs. many users
OneDrive for Business is basically a product to ensure data availability to the desired users. It is a product for data synchronization. In OneDrive for Business, data sharing is done as per team requirements & when objective is completed, the data might be erased. But SharePoint is a product that ensures data availability to all users from anywhere. In SharePoint, data is shared with many users. So, it makes the data available always from anywhere. - Storing vs. collaboration
OneDrive for Business is basically a storing and sharing application, whereas SharePoint is designed and developed more like a collaboration application. OneDrive for Business allows users to store documents privately and share them with team members or others as per the requirements. However, SharePoint facilitates real-time collaboration and enhances teamwork. SharePoint eliminates the need for one-to-one messaging and file sharing. - Sharing vs. publishing
It is a major difference between both platforms. While using OneDrive for Business, you share files with other users, mostly to accomplish a common task. It can be shared as email links also. But in SharePoint, you publish it on intranet sites where it is available to everyone. They can view or download them.
SharePoint vs OneDrive for Business – a comparison table
To clearly understand the difference between these two Microsoft cloud storage, consider OneDrive as your personal notebook and SharePoint as the bulletin board of the school. On the one hand, the notebook contains your own data that you can delete by removing the page and even share it with others. To do the same on the bulletin board, you will need authorization and access to edit, contribute, or remove it.
This is the way SharePoint and OneDrive work. Let’s understand the differences now:
| Factors | SharePoint | OneDrive for Business |
|---|---|---|
| Main function | Collaboration | File storing and sharing |
| Data sharing | Makes data available to all users | Individual file storage that can be shared with specific users or group |
| Other Microsoft applications | Integrates with multiple applications | Integrates with Microsoft Teams |
| Publishing | Can publish on intranet sites | Can share data only |
| Features | Tasks, notifications, calendar, news, etc. with functionality like importing excel to SharePoint lists. | Video conferencing, audio calls, chats, channels, posts, etc. |
| Cloud version availability | Available on cloud | Available on cloud |
Which one to choose – SharePoint vs OneDrive for Business?
As you can see, SharePoint and OneDrive for Business have complementary features. So, it is better if organizations have both together if their budget permits them, and they can benefit from both the applications. If they just have content sharing needs only, OneDrive for Business is enough for them. But if they are looking for advanced collaborative features, SharePoint is definitely what they need.
Do you need to backup SharePoint or OneDrive for Business data?
Just because these are cloud storage services provided by Microsoft, there is a perception that SharePoint and OneDrive data is secure. This is also right to a large extent due to the extremely brilliant security features of these applications. But there are some rare situations in which the security of SharePoint or OneDrive for Business data can also be compromised.
The solution to avoid losing data in such unexpected circumstances is a thorough data backup. There are several methods available to save the data to your local storage and you can backup SharePoint with PowerShell, although it is more suited for technical experts.
How to backup and migrate SharePoint and OneDrive for Business?
Irrespective of what you choose from SharePoint vs OneDrive, backing up both apps is crucial. The manual methods to backup SharePoint and OneDrive are not beginner-friendly, carry the risk of data loss, and involve repetitive actions. Therefore, for a simple & straightforward approach, you must use a professional backup solution like Kernel Migration for SharePoint.
This SharePoint migration tool is a robust application that not just helps you backup SharePoint and OneDrive data but also helps you with complex tasks like data migration. It is a one-stop solution to all your data migration needs across different cloud platforms, such as OneDrive, Google Drive, Teams, etc. For user convenience and retained access to the data, the application also lets you migrate permissions during data transfer.
Conclusion
SharePoint and OneDrive for Business are two different yet complementary platforms from Microsoft. Though many organizations use them both simultaneously, one can choose any one of them as per their requirements. No matter which platform you are using, it is important that you back up the data regularly to avoid any unexpected disasters. You can use Kernel Migration for SharePoint, an effective tool for SharePoint and OneDrive Migration. Additionally, it also helps you backup OneDrive for Business and SharePoint data.
Frequently Asked Questions
Ans: No, even though both OneDrive and SharePoint are a part of the Office 365 collaboration suite, they’re different platforms. OneDrive is basically a cloud-based file storage platform, while SharePoint supports effective content management and collaboration.
Ans: Since OneDrive is a personal storage, it is used for storing and sharing files, documents, and folders. On the other hand, SharePoint is a document management platform used to simplify collaboration among teams.
If the file is for your personal use, store it on OneDrive, and if it is to be made accessible to all, upload it to SharePoint.
Ans: Yes, there’s an option within OneDrive that allows you to easily sync SharePoint library to OneDrive. With this, you can even access your files offline on your local machine.
