The personal cloud storage market is in awkward position: the future is bright.

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TechWeb April 9 article/Jing

The domestic cloud storage market is quietly evolving. In the huge cost-and-profit-making saw, internet companies that used to focus on personal cloud-storage products began to think about the transition, moving closer to the enterprise-class service market, which has a shorter capital-withdrawal period.

March 27, Jin Shanyun announced the launch of the market for enterprise users of the fast-disk business and cloud services platform, officially involved in the Enterprise cloud storage services market; One months ago, Shanda announced a formal suspension of its personal cloud storage service Everbox, which will be merged into other products of the company, Users are urged to complete the data migration by March 1, and as early as the second half of last year, another cloud-storage start-up company has quietly shifted its focus to enterprise-class services to tide over the financial crisis before the new round of financing.

Will the personal cloud storage market face large-scale corporate defections?

Personal cloud storage trapped

Google, which released its personal cloud storage products last month, Keep a bit of a ripple in the country's cloud-storage market, which has been mired in long periods of silence. This is after 2009 close "Google Notebook" service, Google back to the personal cloud notebook market. But compared to the previous domestic personal cloud storage enterprises, Google Keep is not an independent product, and another cloud storage products Google Drive and Google Mail products such as integration more highlighted its existence value.

Personal cloud storage business mainly includes cloud notes and network disk, cloud notes pay attention to the real-time updating of text information preservation, network disk is inclined to the data cloud transmission and storage. Google keep belong to the former, in addition to the Evernote, as well as the domestic followers Youdao Cloud notes, Grand Marcum, Dropbox, Google Drive is a network of representatives, its domestic followers include Baidu network disk, Jinshan fast, 115 network disk, cool plate and so on.

Eric Consulting believes that the maturity of cloud computing technology, the development of mobile Internet, the popularity of smartphones has brought personal cloud storage business prosperity, the 2013 China's personal cloud storage users are expected to reach 2.2.3 billion, the penetration rate of Internet users reached 36.7%. A report by Gartner, a market research institute, shows that 36% of digital content is expected to be stored in the cloud by 2016, compared with 7% in 2011.

The personal cloud storage market has been widely favored by the industry, since 2010, venture companies and the internet giants competed in the field, especially in the mobile Internet tide driven by the proliferation of personal cloud storage services across the platform. But as emerging markets, especially at a moment when users ' Internet product-paying habits have not yet formed, individual cloud-storage start-ups are still far from profitable.

But it is undeniable that cloud storage services are a low entry threshold but need high-tech and high financial support industries. As the number of users grows, the amount of network bandwidth and maintenance costs required by cloud storage services increases geometrically, and the pay-for-user ratio is not significantly increased, and the genes that burn money are too much for small startups. Personal cloud storage gradually abandoned small start-up companies, become a giant to play the game.

August 2012, 115 network disk announced the discontinuation of the public sharing function, is considered as the beginning of the personal cloud storage elimination period; This February, the Grand Personal cloud store, which was not familiar to most people, announced a formal moratorium on its personal cloud storage service Everbox, which will be merged into other products of the company, Users are urged to migrate their data before March 1. The reason, the difficulty of capital repatriation, the pressure of profit, development space by the giant squeeze, many factors can not be ignored.

Moving to Enterprise cloud storage

The difference between cloud storage and the traditional Internet industry is that the threshold is low, but the marginal cost is very high, and many startups didn't think of it at first, leading to a loss of balance under the high cost of low-income pressure game. Under pressure, startups that bet on cloud-storage business are looking for transformational opportunities compared to the "amateurs" nature. This includes personal cloud storage startup cool disk, and Jinshan's newly established subsidiary Jin Shanyun.

Cool Disk was founded in January 2011 by Shire and the Internet Express CEO Huang Mingming Investment founder, has won two rounds of tens of millions of U.S. dollars financing, the current personal cloud storage services cool disk users reached nearly 20 million, but the number of paid users still stay at tens level. October cool disk also had to negotiate with Dropbox financing matters, and eventually failed. In desperation, cool disk began to think about business transformation, will be part of the energy to the enterprise-level market, began to provide institutions and institutions cloud storage services. Earlier this year, the cool plate began to negotiate a new round of financing with Alibaba, in the business transformation on the basis of another blood transfusion, in order to tide over the difficulties.

Jin Shanyun also faces the same confusion. This March, Jin Shanyun launched a fast-disk business and cloud services platform for the enterprise user market, spanning from personal cloud storage to the corporate cloud storage market. Prior to this, Jin Shanyun business is limited to the personal cloud storage market, its fast-disk personal version of the current user has just broken 40 million. According to Jin Shanyun official, the launch of the fast disk commercial and cloud service platform marks the formal formation of Jinshan cloud three lines of business line: cloud services Platform is the foundation layer, commercial and personal version of the fast disk is based on cloud services platform cloud storage products.

But such a statement is still hard to avoid speculation about its transformation. Jin Shanyun CEO Zhanghongjiang explained that the reason to get involved in the enterprise-level market, is found that the demand for cloud services has been further highlighted, corporate cloud market has ushered in a breakthrough opportunity. But he does not deny that personal cloud storage product financial pressure in Jin Shanyun the role of the strategy, "2012 Personal cloud storage Market small entrepreneurial team has been very few, Jin Shanyun from the field of pressure is not No."

Be able to stick to one of the personal cloud storage positions, in addition to strategic considerations, the underlying financial support is the key. Youdao Cloud Note Product leader Shangwei Aviation believes that the domestic personal cloud storage market is still in the education market stage, although the user for the cloud products have a preliminary understanding and use of the scene, but to achieve a monthly active 50 million users, at least 3 years to the extent, Then the user's pay habits and the entire industry's profit chain can enter the formal. And within that time, adequate funding is necessary.

Youdao Cloud notes as NetEase's first cloud business, the beginning of this year, personal users reached 10 million, has not tried any commercial action. Shangwei Air is also frank, Youdao Cloud notes are not under the current pressure from the group, but will be in the right time to consider commercialization issues.