Today consumer electronics maker Lenovo extended its partnership with cloud-based collaboration and file sharing service SugarSync with the announcement of a new service: Lenovo Cloud Storage. This follows an agreement from last year to integrate the latter’s platform into Lenovo’s Simple Tap interface, which ships with some of its PCs.

The latest news takes this joint vision a step further; starting in April, Lenovo’s PCs, handsets and related products will support the service.  It will also work on connected devices by rivaling manufacturers, according to the two companies, and users are given a free 5GB of memory upon signing up.

“Lenovo Cloud Storage by SugarSync makes it incredibly simple and convenient for people to interact with their growing libraries of digital content, from anywhere, at anytime,” said Mark Cohen, Distinguished Engineer & Vice President, Lenovo. “Lenovo Cloud Storage plays a fundamental role in our plan to expand Cloud services, bringing even more new capabilities to consumers and businesses around the world.”

The consumer cloud is growing space, similar to its enterprise counterpart.  The rapid acceleration of mobile adoption serves as a catalyst for this expansion, and Lenovo – similar to HP and Dell – needs to reposition itself as the PC market and other areas are changing.

At the same time, SugarSync and other services are gaining. In spite of the fact it’s facing a lot of competition from the likes of Box, Dropbox and several other alternatives, SugarSync recently received $15 million in funding from VC Coral Group and existing investors. That round brought the company’s total funding to about $50 million, a very impressive sum that’s reflective of the market overall.

The partnership with Lenovo is yet another indication of the growing need to address a market in transition.  We’re seeing a rise in cloud-based services in tools as add-ons for consumer hardware, enabling many of the perks the enterprise has leveraged in recent years.