Disclaimer: Even though I am an MVP, this blog post is only based upon publicly available information, and the predictions are only based upon my knowledge about the M365 ecosystem and prior experience with how Microsoft is handling new capabilities.
What is SharePoint Storage?
SharePoint Storage is the amount of space in TB on your tenant that you will be able to use. You get 1TB with the tenant and an additional 10 GB per licensed user. You can purchase additional storage at 0.20 $ per GB per month. See this blog post for additional details.
What is Microsoft 365 Archive?
Microsoft 365 Archive allows you to retain this inactive data by moving it into a cold storage tier (archive) within SharePoint. Any data archived with Microsoft 365 Archive will have the same searchability, security, and compliance standards applied automatically at a much-reduced cost.
Roadmap item 171100
M365 Archive will enable organizations that have exceeded or are near the SharePoint Storage allotted, to move SharePoint Site Collections into a cheaper storage tier. The current price per GB archived is 25% of ordinary SharePoint storage. (plus a fee if you choose to un-archive a site collection at a later date)
Currently Microsoft 365 Archive is in public preview and some functionality is not available in the product yet. The key feature missing in March 2024 is the ability of end users to see the archived content in Microsoft Search. At the moment it is only administrators that can see the archived content in search.
Q: When can we expect M365 Archive to become GA (General Available)?
A: The roadmap doesn't say yet, but my guess would be sometime in Q3
Q: Will we at some time be able to un-archive/restore individual files from a Site Collection that has been archived?
A: There are no indications that this will be an option any time soon.
Where M365 Archive most likely would be added as on option in existing functionality
In the March 2024 preview we have the option to select a Site Collection in the SharePoint Admin Center and archive it.
Likewise, we can see a list of all archived sites and reactivate them.
However, I am fairly sure that we will see M365 Archive show up as an option is a lot of M365 features within the next few years. And these are just the most obvious areas:
Group Archiving: If M365 Archive has been enabled on the tenanat I would except the site collection to be archived using M365 Archive rather than becoming Read only.
Teams Archiving: Likewise, I would expect all site collections related to the Team to be M365 Archived when the Team is archived. This covers both the default site collection and each site collection related to any private or shared Teams channel.
SharePoint Advanced Management: The Site lifecycle management in SAM will most likely be updated to suggest to the site owners that the site should be archived when SAM detects that the site isn't used very much.
API support: Likewise, I would expect the API support to be even broader. In March both SPO PowerShell as well as PnP.PowerShell can update whether a site is archived or not:
Full API support will ensure that the partner eco system around M365 will be able to incorporate M365 Archive in their solutions: I would expect offering from companies like ShareGate, Orchestry and others will soon be able to manage and migrate archived site collections.
Upcoming features
Team Channel Archiving Roadmap item 123769, I would be very surprised if the new ability to archive a Teams channel wouldn't support M365 Archive. Perhaps not initially, as Microsoft is a huge company and one division might not know what another division is working on ;-)
So far, the Microsoft Archive offering looks very promissing and I have no doubt that many companies will enable it in 2024. Both in the case where the company need to reduce the SharePoint Storage consumption now, but also in the case where the company wish to proactively handle the potential SharePoint Storage problem, but also reduce the sprawl and clutter, perhaps even ensuring that any Copilot investments benefits from a better data quality?