The path of cloud storage development: security concerns and pay tests

China's IDC Circle July 22: After the personal cloud storage service gradually gained user awareness, the cloud storage market for enterprise-class customers is quietly unfolding.

According to statistics, 2012 China's personal cloud storage users reached 107 million, an annual growth rate of 371.7%. The explorers who have achieved fruitful results in this field are also looking at the next "Gold Mine":

Evernote, who entered China last year, announced the introduction of enterprise-class applications at the end of the decade. Youdao Cloud notes head Shangwei heading for this newspaper said that the first personal cloud storage app, although not specifically developed Enterprise Edition, but in the second half will focus on enhancing enterprise-oriented user function building.

In addition, a group of enterprises focused on enterprise-class cloud storage start-up companies also gradually germination, and attracted the attention of VC investors. Among them, qiming venture and Jingwei China has completed the platform-type cloud storage service provider Seven cattle of the B-round financing, and the provision of team collaboration cloud services fast enough to get the Sequoia a round of 40 million yuan funds.

How are these "cloud" companies building a business-class cloud-storage industry chain? Facing the numerous needs of enterprise customers, where are their coping paths?

The competing people in the industrial chain

Two years ago, the newly established cloud storage Company "fast enough" procured a set of server devices to develop a back-end storage system.

This self-reliant infrastructure project soon encountered a bottleneck. Chief executive Jiang Shuo Miao found that with the increase in user volume, room capacity is tight, and the server several failures have let it close to collapse. "Operation of the comrades because of machine failure, midnight rain rushed to the computer room repair, but also because the machine room cable by the subway construction damage, resulting in network interruption, and Unicom and telecommunications interconnection between this is a big trouble."

Jiang Miao realized that the huge cost of the traditional hardware deployment model could bring down the company, which was not yet VC-led. And even if the financing, fast enough to carefully consider whether, like Dropbox Chinese learners cool plate, continue to spend billions of dollars to build infrastructure of the heavy asset path.

Start looking for public cloud providers similar to Amazon EC2 and S3. The main factor to consider, as Shangwei, head of cloud notes, said, "cheap" is only part of the appeal of mature public clouds, and its flexibility and stability are more critical.

In the United States, EC2 (Amazon elastic Compute Cloud, Flexible computing cloud) and S3 (Amazon simple Storage service, easy storage services) services have solved the infrastructure challenges for a large number of start-ups. According to the introduction, users can create their own operating systems and applications such as the Amazon cloud computing platform image, and then upload to the S3.

Chiang Shuo Miao eventually chose Aliyun to provide open storage (OSS) to store all uploaded files in Oss. Under this system, it is fast enough to develop many functions that are more in line with the usage of the enterprise customers, such as the difference upload--each time only the part of the file is modified, and avoid multiple simultaneous modification, to save bandwidth for the enterprise and promote synergy efficiency.

However, for fast enough to rely entirely on the Aliyun model, a concern for the industry's VC investors reminded that "Aliyun is not Amazon." Amazon's public cloud business path has been very clear, Aliyun in the cloud ecological performance is not very clear, "If Ali buy cool, the rumors are true, Ali's idea is worth discussing."

Hudan, vice president of Sequoia China, who is responsible for quick projects, said if Ali was involved in the application in his own cloud, it would actually change the ecology, but after much contact, he thought, as Taobao showed the logic of the platform, "Aliyun do the work of the power plant, not the production of air-conditioning and television."

In the cloud storage industry, some companies ' bets have become opportunities for other companies in the industry. Once dominated the Grand network disk project Xu Xiwei set a new company "seven cattle", and abandoned the 2C mode of the network disk business, positioning for the enterprise-oriented storage service providers-these enterprises are not in the traditional sense of B-end users, but mainly developers. According to seven cattle official website shows, its customers include camera 360, the e-text SMS, MiG 365, weico+ and other application development team.

Xu Xiwei said the SaaS companies, which were fast enough to favour the backend, were potential customers for seven of cattle, while the seven cows and Aliyun, who also had OSS scenarios, were more in touch with each other, "there is not a wide range of Aliyun involved, but it is more appropriate to retain specialized rich media data."

Sheidang, founder of the micro-tribe, who is involved in team-sharing and collaboration, told reporters that the micro tribe had already deployed a portion of its business to Ali Cloud and had cooperated with seven cows. In his view, seven of cattle and Aliyun engaged in almost parallel business, but seven of cattle around the user managed content 2D (developer-oriented) services to do more depth. For the micro-tribal equidistant terminal enterprise users of the latest application platform, no matter aliyun, seven cows or may enter the Amazon, has provided them with more choices.

Security concerns and pay tests

"If there is enough information stored in the cloud, the information is similar to the assets of the bank." Why do you keep money in a bank? "For Xu Xiwei, corporate security concerns are more like a" pseudo proposition ".

However, for the actual contact with the end-users of the terminal enterprise, Jiang Miao, how to overcome the trust crisis, persuading enterprise customers to use a start-up company to provide storage services, is fast enough to face the biggest problem, but at the same time, security concerns to pay the model to create a space for survival.

After more than a year of free mode promotion, fast enough to launch a paid version, its reference is the same Evernote model. New registered users will be free to use the 45-day basic version of the service, then the monthly use of space to pay, at least 199 yuan per month to purchase 50GB of storage capacity. And corporate customer purchases tend to go beyond this low limit, such as fast enough to invest in Sequoia Capital, one-time registered reserves of several TB.

6 months after the launch of Evernote, the number of paid users was 1%, which reached 5.5% after two years. This curve is more significant in enterprise-class cloud storage services. Fast enough to pay version of the online, the user's daily registration volume although a decline, but the old user's pay rate began to rise gradually.

A customer representative from the financial sector told Jiang Shuo Miao, with the charge of a paper contract, the company to eat a "reassuring", security concerns have been eliminated a lot.

As the representative said, "If the data is lost, I can directly come to you for accountability"--rather than by internal personnel to disclose the enterprise data can not be verified, rather than to the third party for hosting. The key to open the data is in the hands of several executives, such as Jiang Shuo Miao, who are fast enough to reach other members.

But the security design of cloud storage is more than that. In an interview with the media, Jiang said that cloud storage deployment logic tends to be "bottom-up". The ultimate use of this service is still one individual, if only the executive layout and no staff recognition, it will be difficult to continue to use in the enterprise.

The security considerations of employees and executives are in different dimensions. In order to balance this contradiction, it is fast enough to reserve private areas for employees within the networked storage space purchased by the enterprise. This part is similar to other personal cloud storage services: The document is saved by me and not involved in the team's collaborative discussion and modification. More importantly, when employees leave, you can safely transfer the content that belongs to the individual.

Resist the temptation to survive?

In the view of Jiang Miao, he is engaged in the enterprise cloud storage is essentially a SaaS service.

The reason for SaaS services comes from young entrepreneurs who have grown up with software and the Internet. For them, "buying software services is just as commonplace as buying a desk", says Hudan, which does not have the imagined difficulty of selling software services to small businesses.

Seven cows is a typical user. Xu Xiwei told reporters, for the mail, documents, customer relationship management, such as a series of professional services, seven of cattle have chosen a third-party company supply. "The biggest bottleneck is that there is no suitable supplier to solve our various needs, but this is the opportunity of other companies."

"The traditional enterprise customers buy software is capital expenditure, after the purchase will start depreciation." And SaaS Software is consumer expenditure, the test cost is not high, according to use quantity pays stickiness is stronger, Hudan says.

In overseas capital markets, SaaS services based on public cloud have been recognized. Hudan points out that while there are no examples of SaaS companies listed in the A-share market, Nasdaq can be used as a reference – most of the 1 billion dollar enterprise software companies are SaaS. The valuation of the US market for SaaS has been higher, according to the PS (market rate) valuation method.

However, in the domestic real market, it is not easy to engage in SaaS, start-up companies often face the public cloud SaaS deployment and private cloud customization choices. Private cloud customization is often an important way of survival for startups that lack VC capital. In addition, the founder of the Nut Cloud has previously told this newspaper that the enterprise private cloud can help businesses build trust and eventually transition to public cloud services.

But in Hudan's view, this is two distinct paths. and entrepreneurial enterprise resources are limited, need to clear positioning, "two put together to do possible problems."

VC investors said that because of the barrier of private cloud, the product is difficult to quickly iterate, the interactive experience is poor. Second, private cloud customization is not fundamentally different from the traditional sale of large software. Companies that originally wanted to engage in SaaS services still had to obtain large orders that were sufficient to feed themselves under the existing conditions. Xu Xiwei that this has deviated from the original meaning of cloud computing services outsourcing, and walked back to the old technology outsourcing.

So, how to meet the special needs of the industry? Xu Xiwei said that if the SaaS company is more professional, as far as possible to abstract common requirements, provide the interface for a small audience needs of the company custom development. "Do SaaS must not be led by customers, or die," Xu Xiwei to reporters, "need to give up the spirit, some people are not your customers, do not reluctantly."

Hudan saw the successful software companies, also probably adopted this model: the enterprise's personalized configuration to the independent software developers to complete.

In this respect, Sheidang made a "bottom line" of the compromise option. He defined the needs of customers as two, and the versatility will be incorporated into the product development plan, and based on the industry's application needs, the micro-tribe will be appropriate for its platform development, and help it access other companies, such as seven cows and fast enough system behind, into the latter subsystem.

He stressed that while micro tribes chose "Walking on legs" in public and private clouds, the micro tribes resisted the temptation in the face of specific customization needs from customers. "In principle, we will not intervene in his development."