Microsoft Corp. is trying a new strategy to widen the adoption of OneDrive for Business in the enterprise.

The technology giant today announced that companies switching to the file sharing service from competing products won’t be billed until they pay off their contract with the previous provider. Specifically, the promotion targets customers of Microsoft’s three top rivals in this segment: Box Inc., Dropbox Inc. and Google LLC with its G Suite toolkit.

The offer tackles the fact that companies often sign long-term cloud deals in exchange for lower fees. In the infrastructure-as-a-service market, as an example, Microsoft offers discounts as high as 82 percent to customers that rent virtual machines for an extended period of time. Under the new OneDrive for Business initiative, the tech giant will provide up to three years’ worth of free subscriptions to firms that switch over from a competitor.

That should make it considerably easier for Microsoft’s salespeople and partners to pitch organizations that already use a rival service. Large enterprises will likely be particularly receptive to the offer. The reason is that the bigger the value of a cloud contract, the harder it is to migrate under normal circumstances.

Another notable aspect is that taking full advantage of the OneDrive for Business feature set requires Office 365. In other words, a company that switches to the file sharing service would likely also adopt the productivity suite, generating yet more sales for Microsoft.

The offer is available through June 30 to organizations that don’t already use Office 365 or OneDrive and carries a minimum purchase requirement of 500 user seats. Besides waiving fees for the duration of a company’s old contract, Microsoft also promises to provide technical assistance with migrations.

Another way Microsoft hopes to increase the appeal of OneDrive is by one-upping the competition in the feature department. At its Ignite conference last year, the company introduced a slew of improvements for the service including a revamped interface and extra sharing options. One of the main highlights was File On-Demand, a capability that lets users view files kept in OneDrive even if they don’t have the client installed.

Image: Microsoft