Posted on 08/01/2014 3:04:21 PM PDT by nickcarraway
It wasn't long ago that cloud storage companies such as Box and Dropbox were among the hottest startups in Silicon Valley, blessed with vast amounts of venture capital and poised to go public in blockbuster IPOs.
But now, thanks to a price war launched by Google, Amazon and other tech giants, almost anyone with a laptop or tablet can get cloud storage for less than the price of a latte.
That means Box and Dropbox, which sell software for businesses and consumers to store and use files on the Internet rather than a machine, are confronting a precarious future: They must figure out how to go head-to-head with the world's most powerful tech companies. The jockeying has forced both startups to rethink their plans to go public -- Box filed for an IPO in March, but has delayed trading, and Dropbox, once poised to be one of the biggest tech IPOs of the year, may not have a public offering in its immediate future.
"Right now there is a huge arms race between Apple, Google, Microsoft, and now Amazon has thrown their hat in the ring," said Vineet Jain, co-founder and CEO of Egnyte, a Mountain View company that sells software that allows companies to store data both in the cloud and on premise. "These four guys are capable of making it free or nearly free, and the price points that you're seeing from these vendors such as Box will have to come down, or they will have a shrinking user base. You cannot out-compete Microsoft and Google on price -- you just can't."
For Box and Dropbox -- and the investors who have poured millions of dollars into them -- there's a lot of money on the line. In 2013, cloud storage companies raised $1.2 billion from venture capitalists,
(Excerpt) Read more at mercurynews.com ...
The cloud turns out to be blue sky.
It never fails. Too many companies chasing too little business. Economics 101.
When local memory has become so cheap to purchase, to the point where you can buy multiple redundant backups dirt cheap, why would anyone store info on some anonymous server somewhere, without any idea of who else has access to that info? The “cloud” is just another scheme for data mining. If your data is not on a closed system, it has already been comprimised.
I just do not trust ‘online’ storage, etc.
I have lost content when some companies just decided to close a certain service — without notice.
USB hard drives are cheap and hold massive amounts of data.
==
Then, there is the problem of the cable company deciding to play with their connections so the internet is either sporadic or down for a few hours.
Whatever you do, don’t use Google. They’re basically a quasi government subsidiary.
What happens if you have a massive fire or flood that destroys that local storage.
I look at it as having insurance that if something catastrophic happened to my house, I can still recover my files.
With the kind of stuff I put out there, it’s like, if you want to hack it, go ahead, you’ll just be bored.
“The Cloud” — euphemistic geekspeek for “ever-more-dodgy server capacity, in increasingly far-away disease-and-strife-ridden third-world hellholes you wouldn’t even collect stamps from”.
Thanks, but no thanks.
>> I look at it as having insurance that if something catastrophic happened to my house, I can still recover my files.
You bet!
As long as nothing happens to *their* house. :-)
(Oh, but of course, we take GREAT CARE of your data. And NO ONE but YOU EVER EVER looks at it. Honest! We PROMISE. Srsly.)
Ding! Ding! Ding!
We have a winner!
AWS and similar are typically not in “far-away disease-and-strife-ridden third-world hellholes you wouldn’t even collect stamps from.”
There mostly in places like Dallas, Utah, Atlanta, etc.
Arrgh! They’re.
>> typically
Interesting, that word.
As competition pushes the cost to the consumer ever-downward — do you suppose your data will *always* reside on cloud servers in Dallas, and never in Bangladesh?
Isn’t the whole beauty of the “cloud” that “it doesn’t matter” where your data reside?
Given a choice between a high-cost provider and a low-cost provider — and terms of service that don’t require them to disclose — do you think your provider will keep your data with the high-cost provider in the country where rule of law more or less holds sway? Or a lower-cost provider in a country governed by whim?
Just thought questions.
To each his own. I run cloud servers for non-critical apps with un-sensitive data placed in cost-effective locations.
My sensitive and personal data? I keep that close to the vest, and maintain best practice control over it to preclude local catastrophes, including not only loss but also uncontrolled disclosure.
Sort of like when browsers became free - Netscape had to radically change it’s business model. It’s hard to make money on something that is free.
http://mega.co.nz gives you 50 GB free.
What happens if you have a massive fire or flood that destroys that local storage.
I look at it as having insurance that if something catastrophic happened to my house, I can still recover my files.<<
Put the flash drive in a plastic bag and put it in a small fireproof safe. Protected from heat and water.
Microsft Office, $10 a month for 5 computers, your tablets and cell phone.
1 terrabyte storage per PC
What is the value add from dropblox or those dummies at CarbonFlake?
Buh bye....
Sugarsync too. No real reason for their lame existence.
It is called barriers of entry for competition.
In tech you need to establish something that is hard to reproduce. Like database software, social media critical mass (AirBnB, Lyft, Vine, Secret). These are defensible.
Commodity services, not so much,
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