Betting on Box in a SkyDrive and Google Drive world As the desktop is consumed by the rising tablet market, the file system as we know it is doomed. No, we won't suddenly lose the need to keep track of files and folders. But how we do so is undergoing a dramatic shift. As Funambol founder Fabrizio Capobianco explains, our files increasingly live within apps. But not really. …
"Dropbox plan to take over the enterprise through individual consumers."
Well we're seeing demand for it already so the pressure is there but I can't see it working the way Apple / BYOD did.
With the latter the existing infrastructure supported those devices and there really wasn't a problem from a security point of view - using something like Citrix means no corporate data leaves the organisation - Dropbox would be the complete opposite, no one is comfortable with the security implications and the existing remote access infrastructure works against its adoption.
This would be the same Box.com who, on the very day that Google launched Drive, decided (without telling anyone, seemingly including their own support staff) to remove a few features from their free accounts? All of a sudden the download count in the general files list has vanished, and is now only accessible by the inconvenient method of opening up a preview of each file in turn.
When asked about this, the initial response (on their community forum) was that it was an error with a software update and that things would be fixed. Then later another Box employee said that no, this was a deliberate removal and permanent. Cue several rather confused and increasingly pissed off Box users, many of whom are now actively looking around at DropBox, Drive, SkyDrive etc to try and find a host with more of a clue.
Subtle hint to Box - when your competitors launch new and rival services, you should be looking to increase your offering and make it more attractive, not the exact opposite! Even M$ seem to have got the message...
Sounds like lock-in to me...
I want my files where I can get at them, and in a standard format please.
I use dropbox for some things that I used from both my home PC and my netbook. I expect an independent company to be more interested in making it work with everything, where MS/Google will want to make it work best with their own stuff.
@Tom 35
"Sounds like lock-in to me..."
Absolutely, and is anticompetitive. As the cloud app / storage market settles down there may be law suites at dawn over interoperability, lock-in, etc.
I'm amazed that the fuss over Megaupload hasn't dented the thirst for cloud storage. If ever there was a lesson concerning how many eggs one can wisely put in a single basket, that was it.
What was it that Joni Mitchell sang? You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone? Having complete control of files is something that the computing industry has had and taken for granted for decades now. Take that away and life becomes harder.
I am seeing a lot of home and small business users using the cloud drives as backup and replication services. Not for 'critical' style business data, or data that needs to be kept private, but a set of data that may be available on the net, but scattered and not quickly accessible. For many people the risk of the data becoming public is less of an issue then the risk of losing the data altogether. Also, most home and small business users don't have the knowledge of running and securing their own server correctly. The risk of a cloud service revealing their information is lower then if they tried to do it themselves.
Now in enterprise and larger business applications... it seems like there is far more issues with this in that data is traveling places that you don't know, the that users don't know, and that may possibly be violations of one law or another.
@pixl97
"For many people the risk of the data becoming public is less of an issue then the risk of losing the data altogether. "
And that's an entirely reasonable requirement for people to have. However I'm not convinced that people actively assess whether these cloud services are genuinely offering that. After all, legitimate users of Megaupload probably thought it was OK until the day the Feds closed it down.
"Now in enterprise and larger business applications... it seems like there is far more issues with this in that data is travelling places that you don't know, the that users don't know, and that may possibly be violations of one law or another."
I don't think that it should just be enterprise and business users who should be concerned about that. Data stored in a cloud could persist for a loooong time. Any data put up in the cloud may in the future come under scrutiny from the local authorities. Widespread consumer orientated cloud storage is fairly new, and we all know that it takes ages for law worldwide to catch up with what is and is not reasonable. Given that most of this stuff is US based or linked somehow to the US (e.g. by a .com TLD) this essentially that means second guessing what investigative and prosecuting powers US authorities will have in the future, and what future US law is.
Just imagine what that might mean if someone like Palin or Santorum ever got voted in. Scary? I mean, what could the consequences be for someone who in their teenage years made a mistake? Could the content of that long forgotten cloud account comes back to haunt them in their adult life if they ever travelled to the US? We already know that US authorities aren't blessed with a sense of humour or a well developed sense of proportion.
If it ain't encrypted I ain't interested. I don't trust the vendors any more than the Government's whose jurisdiction they fall under. I don't buy into the nothing to hide bullshit either. It's private data and that's how I want it to stay so until they come up with simple, integrated security that enables me to access my data from multiple devices I'm not interested. Oh, and when they can prove its adequately secured from loss and corruption too.
Perhaps people are using Dropbox and the like for low-security things: things which bear little or no ill consequence if leaked (simple things like shopping lists or the phone's camera logs) or basic collaborations on low-security projects. What few things there are that are higher security (like a keyring) aren't left in public folders and have their own encryption.
"After all, legitimate users of Megaupload probably thought it was OK until the day the Feds closed it down."
Anyone who saw the garish design, the banner ads, the constant upsell to the premium account, etc. and *still* thought Megaupload was 'probably OK' for cloud storage deserved to lose their data IMHO. Call it some sort of 'digital Darwinism' at work.
For him to say that basic sync features don't win the fight is simplistic. Desktop sync has to work if anyone is going to use the service, and it has to work even if I throw hundreds of thousands of small files at it. Box can't handle that. Some of the competition can. This is a huge deal.
I use Dropbox. I use the Bitcasa beta. I used to use Apple's iDisk. None of them have the collaboration features offered by Box. But with sync completely useless, my company of 200 employees dropped Box like a hot potato during evaluation. We're still searching for a good solution.
1.There is no mentioning of how about a feature in email to move attachment to Drive. Just like ... View, Download, Download All ... there should be a feature to "Copy/Move to Drive...".
2.Also plz note gmail's search is P-T-H-E-T-I-C. I went pulling my hair (not from down there) unable to find a video of Race Jockey i had sent .... searched through Jockey then Race ... then Jockey with Attachments ... then using "TO:" and "has:attachment' .... the email/file turned out to be RaceJockey
3. With google drive's option to view any format video streamed down in intelligently lowered bitrate e.g. 350MB uploaded video with viewable 7mb downlaod (with original file unharmed). This feature is again cunningly missed from gmail. i have many emails i sent video in but their is no option along View, Download, Download All, "View Streamed".
Then your data security is toast anyway.
As for the bleating on about stuff like Megaupload - if the data's that critical why the f**k would you only leave it in one place?
No backups == it isn't important data.
(Aka: "Yes, I can arrange to recover that critical data from your 70 quid drive which just failed, but there's a minimum charge of 1400 quid and requires a bunch of paperwork submitted to the director which may have a bearing on your future employment here. Tell me again why you declined our 300 quid/year departmental backup service on the basis you had it covered locally?")
want to trust my data to a data mining company? Google is a data mining company and so is Microsoft. I don't know about dropbox. Plus, if your data is in the 'cloud,' is it really yours? The folks who had legitimate data on MegaUpload are bumming right now because they lost a ton of data when the service was shutdown by law enforcement.
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