Personal cloud storage: Wonderful beyond Storage

As an important application of cloud computing, personal cloud storage has gradually come into people's lives. Whether it is the network disk class cloud storage or the note class cloud storage, its splendid all far exceeds the storage boundary.

Cloud computing still makes people feel a little misty, but personal cloud storage has inadvertently entered people's lives. Network Disk class cloud storage company Dropbox in 2011 to obtain 250 million dollars of huge financing, the international it "Big Three" Microsoft, Apple, Google has launched a cloud storage services, domestic Baidu, Tencent, Alibaba, Huawei, Jingdong Mall also joined the cloud storage competition queue. Note-like cloud storage company Evernote valuation has reached 1 billion U.S. dollars and plans to go public, the domestic Shanda, NetEase also launched similar products.

Cloud storage is a technology that stores enterprise and individual files or data in a data center rather than locally and pays for actual use. The big development of cloud storage is driven by multiple forces: first of all, the heat of the mobile terminal has given birth to the user's demand for multiple terminal content synchronization, and the development of mobile Internet provides convenience; Secondly, the information explosion of the Internet era puts forward higher requirements for data storage, management and analysis, and cloud storage satisfies this requirement; In addition, the gradual maturation of cloud computing allows cloud storage to be technically achievable.

In 2011, China's personal cloud storage users reached 23 million and grew by as much as 804%, according to the consulting data. Eric predicts that personal cloud storage will grow rapidly in the past two years, and by 2013, the size of personal cloud storage users will reach 223 million, and the penetration rate in Chinese netizens will reach 36.7%.

Dropbox: A model for cloud storage of network disk class

Dropbox is the pioneer and model of cloud storage in the network, it was founded in 2007 in San Francisco, 2008 years of product on-line. The founder of Dropbox, a two-graduate student from MIT, started the company "to make life simpler". Dropbox provides a local file of the network synchronization storage, users can access the files on multiple platforms anytime, anywhere, you can change the contents of the Dropbox offline, after the network restore automatically to the modified part of the cloud, Dropbox can also send invitations to achieve content sharing.

Dropbox soon obtained 7.2 million U.S. dollars of financing, product online six months later, the user reached 1 million. In September 2009, Dropbox registered more than 2 million subscribers and rejected Apple's "nine-digit" takeover offer at the end of the year. June 2010, the number of Dropbox registered users exceeded 6 million. In October 2011, Dropbox received $250 million trillion in financing, valued at $4 billion trillion. Currently, the number of Dropbox users has exceeded 50 million.

Dropbox profit model for limited space for free, upgrade pay. Dropbox provides 2G of free space for individual users, and it can get 500M extra space for every friend you invite, and the extra space you get by inviting friends is up to 16G. In other words, the maximum free space available to the user is 18G. If you want to get more space, you need to pay. In response to competition, in July 2012, Dropbox increased the storage space of paid users by one fold, with annual payments of 99 of dollars of users rising from 50G to 100G, and the annual 199-dollar user's storage space lifted from 100G to 200G, and added 499 dollars a year to get a new category of 500G space. In 2011, Dropbox revenue was more than 240 million dollars and the proportion of paid users was about 4%.

Giant spoiler: extending cloud storage boundaries

Dropbox by virtue of the first advantage in the cloud storage area to obtain a temporary lead, but as an important emerging area of the Internet, cloud storage attracted many giants to come to the spoiler, they have a deep combination of cloud storage and its own advantages, and constantly expand the cloud storage boundaries. The wonderful cloud storage will be far beyond storage.

Since 2007, Microsoft has been quietly enabling cloud storage services SkyDrive, and in April 2012, the introduction of a paid version, users can use Windows Live or MSN account login, the old users can get 25G free space, after April 22, new users registered to get 7G free space. Microsoft also links SkyDrive with Hotmail and MSN services by prompting friends to update. In June 2011, Apple launched Cloud service icloud, replacing MobileMe, which previously had cloud storage capabilities. icloud's free space is 5G, integrating the features of the app Store, ibooks, and itunes music. April 2012, Google launched the cloud storage services Google Drive, free space for the 5g,google Drive and Google documents Google Docs depth integration, different users can work together to deal with various documents in real time.

International it "big three" have shot, domestic companies are not to be outdone. 2011, before the official launch of Apple icloud, Alibaba launched the "Aliyun OS" operating system and the system equipped with the sky-language cloud smartphone, to provide users with 100G of free cloud storage space; in March 2012, Baidu launched personal cloud storage services Baidu Network disk, and may be its with Baidu · Easy smartphone platform for integration, and plans to explore the diversification of profitability through a paid upgrade; in July 2012, Tencent officially issued a "micro-cloud" personal cloud service platform, providing micro-cloud network disk, micro-cloud album, micro-Cloud transmission three major functions; July 2012, Jingdong Mall online cloud storage services Jbox, Currently only for E-book users and the gold above the user open, users can buy E-books directly uploaded to the Jbox. In addition, Sina Weibo based on the advantages of the introduction of cloud storage application micro-disk, users can be on the micro-blog to share the content. Huawei, Jinshan, China Telecom, etc. also launched their own cloud storage services, the domestic market also appeared cool disk, 115 network disk, such as a number of specialized cloud storage companies.

Clearly, these companies are not simply looking at the cloud storage business as a function of storage and synchronization, but rather want to leverage the original number of users to make it part of their ecosystem, to integrate with other businesses, or to make cloud storage services an application platform. When a user puts a lot of photos, address books, files and other personal data stored in the cloud storage platform, higher migration costs enhance the user stickiness, which may mean that, although the current cloud storage is only through the way of paying upgrades to profit, but in the future, when the user group formed, the larger profit space will be ripe.

Note Class Cloud storage: Personal information Butler

The network disk class cloud storage mainly is the file carries on the storage management, the note class cloud storage is to help the user to record information at any time and anywhere as the core function, the edition is more strong, may write and reads at the multiple terminals at any moment, acts as the personal Information Butler's function.

Evernote is currently the world's largest user of cloud notebook products, in June 2008 online. As of June 2012, its users reached 34 million, monthly growth rate of 36%, of which paid users 1.4 million. Evernote by charging advanced users, users can choose to pay 5 dollars a month or 45 dollars a year, paid users can get multiple privileges, such as uploading more types of files, a more limited flow per month, etc. 2012, Evernote successfully received the D-round financing of 70 million U.S. dollars, the company valued at 1 billion U.S. dollars, and has a listing plan; in May, Evernote launched "Impression notes" to officially enter China.

Evernote's goal is not only to make a note product, but to become a "memory hub for All mankind". According to its plan, the first stage is to record the user's all ideas, the second stage is to better manage and explore the value of this information. In July 2010, Evernote announced the launch of the official application platform Evernote Trunk, which brings together a variety of applications that can work with Evernote, such as sending mail content to Evernote, and scanning paper content such as business cards to Evernote.

The domestic market also appeared a batch of imitation Evernote products. September 2010, the Grand Innovation Institute launched a permanent free cloud notebook Products Marcum Chronicle, this is the first cloud notebook products, and in 2012 two to open to developers api;2011 June, NetEase's Youdao search for the introduction of cloud notes Products Youdao Cloud notes, users can use NetEase mailbox integral Exchange space, Youdao Cloud notes also said it will be free to the end.

Given the pay habits of Chinese internet users, free will still be the mainstream of domestic cloud notebook products. When Evernote into China, its CEO Fille Liebing (Phil Libin) has said that Evernote in China for 10 years without profit, only to make a great product. Marcum notes and Youdao Cloud notebook backed grand and NetEase two strong companies, short-term profit pressure is not big. Perfect products, cultivate users, or will be China's cloud notebook market at this stage of the main task.

"Security" is a gateway.

Whether the network disk class cloud storage or note-like cloud storage, "security" is a barrier to go around. In the past, hackers had only been able to attack a company, and now, given that cloud storage is storing information in a data center, hackers can access large amounts of data only by attacking data centers. Aside from hackers, whether a cloud storage company as a steward of information will inside, or "fail" because of technical problems, is a concern for users. In fact, this concern is justified in the light of the cloud storage security incidents that have taken place in the last two months.

A user in the Netherlands discovered in July 2012 that his SkyDrive account had been sealed after uploading 9G of files, raising questions about Microsoft's monitoring of user data, and in July, a user said that it was a spam message with a fraudulent nature for Dropbox's specially set mailbox. The Dropbox denies that there are security vulnerabilities, but such denials are hard to convince because in 2011 Dropbox also had a loophole in which anyone could log in Dropbox only by email address; August 6, Sheng issued a statement, said that because of a physical machine in Wuxi computer room damaged Local Disk , resulting in the loss of part of the user's personal data; Also at the beginning of August, a journalist's icloud account was hacked, the hacker removed all its information from the icloud and stole the associated Twitter account.

No company dares to claim that its data center is absolutely safe, and that "security" may never be around, but it is clearly against the trend. Cloud storage companies should be as far as possible to improve awareness of prevention and control technology, users can also be important information backup, regular replacement password, and so on, the common efforts, cloud storage can still be used for me.

(Responsible editor: Duqing first)