Personal cloud storage: The next wave of gold rush

The young billionaire in Silicon Valley has added a pair of young people, the founder of personal cloud storage service Dropbox drew Houston and his Chinese-American girlfriend CeCe Cheng from Shanghai, China. This year's 28-Year-old drew Houston created Dropbox in 2007, only 4 years to increase the company's market value to 4 billion U.S. dollars. Before him, the young billionaire who entered Silicon Valley was the founder of Facebook, his age social networking site, Zuckerberg. If the "capital's sense of smell is the most sensitive" criterion, then the list of Drew Houston means that since the social network, a new wave of gold rush has arrived, it is consumer-oriented cloud storage.

Dropbox can provide 2GB free storage space for consumers, and users can also pay to upgrade to 100GB. Its biggest feature is support for all clients, you can store the data to the cloud and share it on any other device, as long as you download the Dropbox client on any device. Dropbox boasts 25 million users, with 1 million files stored every 5 minutes, 300 million per day and more than 100 billion in total.

"The purpose of creating Dropbox is to make life simpler." "If you can save these people 1 hours in a complex computer application, that will have a huge impact," says Drew Houston. "Dropbox's 2011-year income is expected to reach $100 million trillion.

According to Aaron Levie, chief executive of Box.net, another cloud storage provider with a market capitalisation of more than $2 billion trillion, cloud storage services can extend from corporate users to ordinary consumers, thanks largely to the widespread use of mobile interconnect devices and the drop in server and storage costs. Box.net's server space lease costs have dropped to 1/5 to 1/8 in 2005.

What personal cloud storage can do

In addition to the Dropbox, box these innovative companies, the crocodile will naturally not easily let go of the market, Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft are also in the market began to compete.

From 12th this month, Apple device players have been able to back up their music music, gaming Records, E-books, TV shows, movies and personal data to Apple's cloud storage service icloud. icloud offers 5GB free space. Its experience says icloud is a typical Apple style-easy to use. You want to back up a song, the system can automatically identify it, and choose this song from a huge cloud music library to automatically match your device, you don't have to upload it, it doesn't consume your bandwidth; you took photos with your iphone, The system can instantly browse through the cloud on Apple devices such as the ipad or Mac, and you don't have to manually configure it.

"We're going to mainstream the digital life of our users into cloud technology products," said former Apple CEO Steve Jobs at the June Apple Computer Global developers ' conference. We will reduce the status of PCs and Macs and make them similar devices to the ipad and iphone. "For this, Apple has built a data center in North Carolina to provide icloud services, costing 1 billion of dollars." Of course, icloud is more of a means of "kidnapping" users than Apple devices, which will force users to stay in Apple's device and service system.

Amazon's cloud storage service, named Cloud Drive, also hooks up the service with digital content and hardware devices it sells. Amazon's policy is to provide free cloud storage if users buy digital content on their Web sites via Amazon devices. Amazon offers 5GB of free space if you store digital content purchased elsewhere. More than 5GB users will pay. Amazon wants to encourage users to buy more content on their Web sites through cloud storage and its hardware devices.

Of course, Microsoft, Google and other companies are also promoting personal-oriented cloud storage. However, as Ray Wang, chief executive of Constellation Research, a market researcher, says, no company has been able to integrate software and hardware so tightly as Apple and Amazon do.

The abacus of Chinese manufacturers

Chinese manufacturers are expected to do well in this area, as foreign cloud storage services are not a good ground for policy barriers in China. As a result, the domestic market for cloud storage war has begun.

At the end of the September China International Communication Exhibition, several parties have played a ring. The cool cloud, a mobile-phone maker, is expected to be online in October, providing personal information synchronization and file storage for cool mobile users. This is also a way to stick to the user. "You put the data on my cloud, so the next time you buy a cell phone, you might give me priority." Said the cool young man.

China Telecom also showed the "E Cloud", although it is now limited to Shanghai users. "E-Cloud" for those who chose China Telecom 10 trillion and more optical fiber service users, to provide them with 100G free cloud storage space, can be synchronized in multiple devices on the collaboration information. "Maybe one of my single services is not competitive enough, but I tie them together and the competitive advantage is obvious." "China Telecom said.

Tencent also provides 2M free cloud storage space for users who use QQ browsers on their phones. From the space capacity, QQ cloud storage is not an advantage. "However, as long as you log on to the QQ cloud platform, you may not be able to get down, we have novels on this platform, games, and other people share interesting documents, and these services are very friendly interface." "said Tencent.

Even shelling cloud storage services is the manufacturer's stunt Millet technology chairman Lei also have to admit this trend, its chairman of the Jinshan Company's fast-disk services integrated into the millet mobile phone.

Analysis of domestic consumer-oriented cloud storage services, can be divided into several types of participation forces: traditional hardware manufacturers, such as Huawei "cloud mobile phone", cool pie "cool cloud" and so on, mobile internet manufacturers, such as Sina "micro-disk", Tencent "QQ network Disk" and so on; traditional download tool manufacturers, such as the Thunderbolt "portable", 360 cloud plate, Jinshan fast disk Telecom operators and traditional IDC companies, such as China Telecom, "e Cloud" and so on.

Many cloud service forces who will win? It is too early to draw a conclusion. However, Jason Manyard, an analyst at Wells Fargo (Wells Fargo), said that companies were fighting over the control of Internet consumers, and that the key to success was data control. As a result, cloud storage is just one way in which all kinds of forces try to control consumers, and perhaps the purpose of their cloud services is "rejection". Therefore, who has a strong ability to integrate, the cloud, digital consumption, hardware equipment can be more closely integrated, who will win this wave of gold rush.

Personal Cloud storage Players

Dropbox

Dropbox is a software used to sync between the network and different computers, providing 2GB free cloud hard disk space. If the client uploads no maximum single file restrictions, users upload photos, documents, video to a device Dropbox inside, files can be synchronized to the Dropbox server side, in any of your installed Dropbox device can access.

Microsoft Windows Live SkyDrive

Provide 25GB free capacity to users, but limit the maximum number of uploaded individual files can not exceed 100MB. Users can upload photos, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc., and browse through the files through a Web browser. SkyDrive has powerful permission settings that allow users to decide whether to share files with whom.

Box.net

Provides 5GB free cloud storage space with file sizes ranging from MB to 1GB.

Google Docs

To provide users with free 1GB of cloud storage space. The capacity to upload the document up to 250MB, which has far exceeded the majority of email mailbox attachment capacity limits. Google docs allows users to upload files in any format.

Amazon Cloud Drive

5GB storage space is provided to users free of charge. According to Amazon, 5GB enough users to store 1000 songs, 2000 photos or 20-minute high-definition video. Users can access Amazon cloud Drive from any internet security, and songs or albums purchased from Amazon MP3 Store are not counted into 5GB storage limits.

Apple icloud

The services provided to Apple's owners provide free 5GB of cloud storage capacity, which can be used to store music, apps, books, TV shows, etc., including game data and configuration file preservation. Seamless sharing of files among Apple devices.

Adobe Creative Cloud

Adobe announces that it will officially launch its own cloud storage service Creative Cloud and 6 new tablet applications in November. Free capacity 20GB. But the Android version will be the first, and the ipad will probably not be out until early next year. 6 major applications include: Image layering, editing, adding effects, fast merging of images, vector drawing applications, etc.

China Telecom "e-Cloud" storage

Access to 100GB China Telecom's free cloud storage space, the premise is that the user chose China Telecom 10 trillion and more fiber services in the household.

Sina Micro-disk

Microblogging users by default to provide 2GB free space, attention to the @ micro-disk official Weibo can participate in space delivery activities. Currently on the flyer file maximum support 100M.

Huawei Cloud Storage

Huawei offers 16GB of huge cloud storage space for users who buy MediaPad tablets, and Huawei's cloud phone vision has 160GB of cloud service space.

QQ Network Disk

QQ HDD Quietly upgraded this year, may implement the charging policy, QQ members enjoy a priority experience value of 50 yuan/month QQ network disk privileges, experience during the main provision of 3GB storage space, 1GB single File upload restrictions, drag and drop upload download, less than 5 simultaneous upload/download task number and other functional services.