To marry or die? Cloud storage startups ' tough choices

Intermediary transaction SEO diagnosis Taobao guest Cloud host technology Hall

Get married or die? While the domestic cloud storage market has not officially begun to shuffle, it has had to sweat the future of the cloud storage start-ups that survive in the Giants ' cracks.

"Barely supported."

The old independent network disk Rayfile in the IT times to visit the word repeatedly, which also reflects the current domestic enterprises engaged in cloud storage startups are the status quo. Although Rayfile early in 2007 launched the network disk products, and quickly become a leader in the network disk industry. But as the Giants enter the industry, the days of rayfile are getting worse. According to reports, in Baidu launched a network disk service within two days, the strength of the rayfile plunged 20%, the flow rate is only about 1/8 of the peak (when the daily average PV amount to 4 million). After removing a batch of servers, limiting space, reducing bandwidth, and doing as many web ads as possible on a Web page, they are barely profitable.

Some startups may be lucky enough to have investments. A cool dish is one of them. Cool disk in September 2010 won the famous angel investor Shire Angel Investment, and in January 2011 completed A round of financing, October 2011 completed the 20 Million dollar round B financing. But not all startups are so lucky, most of the start-up companies in the brink of danger, a wooden network of the head of the Zhongjianyu revealed that in order to stabilize the user resources and traffic, they took and users into the way of advertising commissions, the monthly investment in the hardware will be 150,000 yuan, at all, not profitable.

In the forum, to provide users with the download of storage service providers by Rayfile, Nano disk, 115 network discs gradually become Baidu Cloud, Huawei Network disk, Thunder fast disk, Jinshan fast disk and other large companies cloud storage services. Those who have been the products can only continue to walk on the edge of gray income, by publishing adult movies, pirated resources, such as download links to attract traffic and users, rely on limited advertising to maintain the survival of the site. Once these websites are big, they will be in danger of regulation, and 115 of the web is a problem.

In foreign countries, cloud storage startups are facing the same problem. With giants like Google, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon rolling out cloud storage, independent cloud-storage startups have to confront the Giants ' competition, Megaupload, Fileserve, Rapidshare, Filesonic, Mmediafire , Hotfile and other similar rayfile network disk by the release of adult movies, pirated resources, such as download links to attract traffic and users of the company may be better, but other companies?

Even companies like Dropbox have to think about their own way out. Last year, Dropbox a partnership with Facebook. Users can bind their Dropbox accounts to Facebook accounts and share documents and data directly with Facebook friends in Dropbox. Dropbox hopes to keep some sense of security behind Facebook, where, after all, Facebook does not have its own cloud-storage service, and if Facebook wants to, it may be a shortcut to Gaofu. Box.net has become the largest enterprise cloud service company in the market after successfully financing 280 million of dollars, and its CEO, Levie, is not ready to go public, although he says that if the Box does not want to be acquired, it can only choose to go public, but in the current competitive situation, Box.net IPO The risk is still relatively large.

Either to marry the Giants or to be killed by the Giants, it seems that independent cloud storage companies can only face such a choice.

"Animal ferocity"

In fact, foreign cloud storage start-up companies are much better than the domestic counterparts. In the early years of hardware, domestic start-ups have burned a lot of money to buy servers and bandwidth, slowly nurturing domestic users ' pay habits. However, at this time, the Giants in order to circle users have declared "free" to use more space, but also to allow a large number of users to defection. For many individual users, free space is enough for them to use, VIP value-added services are not so urgent.

In this case, even if more money is available to compete with the Giants, the existing business model has to reconsider, when will the burnt money be made back? Once the capital chain breaks, this high investment project can easily fall into death.

In addition to the investment can not be compared with the Giants, the use of independent network and the convenience of the account is also less common than large companies. Apple users, for example, can easily use Apple's cloud storage services, plus a seamless interface with IOS systems, to make them easy to use without third-party cloud storage services. By the same token, Google and Microsoft also rely on their operating systems, related products and mobile terminals to facilitate users to facilitate synchronization between different products. For example, even if not Sina micro-disk users, but because it can easily store and collect information on Sina Weibo, the user will naturally become Sina micro-disk.

When users rely more and more on the giant's cloud services offerings, they are considering migrating data from other products, which, after all, will not be easy to manage, not to mention the free capacity offered by independent cloud storage companies.

Finally, we have to consider a problem, once the start-up companies closed, their own data. In security, most users rely more on large companies. From the cost of input, cloud storage needs a complete set of infrastructure as a support, a large number of data storage, operation and day-to-day operations, big companies obviously in resources, experience, technology has innate advantages, not the general small entrepreneurial team can be compared. After all, no one wants to pin their important data on startups that aren't sure about the future.

Jingwei China Vice President Juhaibo in an interview to say pessimistic:

"At least in the personal market, I think it is very difficult for small companies to emerge. Because in the personal market, in the final analysis, the competition is the brand influence, not just technical strength and product design. ”

Clove Garden CTO Feng Dahui Teacher also commented:

"Cloud storage for the individual market is likely to be occupied by large companies, or firmly stuck in position." And, from now on, that's pretty much it. Smaller players will not be able to occupy a better position in the future, unless it is to preempt the niche market (Niche harsh), but it basically determines that such companies can only be small and beautiful, it is difficult to make the scale bigger. ”

"Chicken Effect"

I personally think that Feng Dahui, the cloud storage start-up company's view is still more optimistic, in fact, the current domestic cloud storage even "niche market" are very small.

Niche markets (a wide variety of domestic translations: Gap market, niche market, needle market, the current more popular transliteration translation: niche market, pointing to those who are the dominant in the market/have the absolute advantage of the enterprise neglected some of the market segments, niche market refers to the choice of a small product or service areas, Focus on entering and becoming the leader, from the local market to the whole country to the global, while building a variety of barriers, and gradually develop a lasting competitive advantage.

The ideal niche market might have the following six features:

1, narrow product market, a broad geographical market. The starting point of a niche strategy is to select a relatively small product (or service), this is the first element of a niche strategy, focusing all resources on attacking a small point, forming a winning force locally, which is the core idea of a niche strategy; at the same time, capturing a broad geographical market with a smaller niche product is the second element of a niche strategy, Products have a very large market capacity, in order to achieve economies of scale, economic globalization of the market environment just to provide a good condition.

2. Have the potential of sustainable development. First, to ensure that enterprises enter the market, can establish a strong barrier, so that other enterprises can not easily imitate or replace, or through targeted technology research and development and patent, guide the target customer demand direction, leading the market trend, to extend the market leadership of enterprises; Second, the target customers in this market will continue to increase the trend, niche market can be further subdivided, enterprises may be in this market sustainable development.

3, the market is too small, the difference is large, so that a strong competitor to the market disdain. Since neglected, it must be its weakness, and in turn, we can find space for development in the weak spots of our formidable rivals, the so-called weakness, which is the difference between the means and the method and the highest degree of satisfaction of the consumers in meeting the consumer demand in this field, Consumer demand is not well met, which is a market opportunity that can be replaced.

4, enterprises have the ability and resources and to the market to provide quality products or services commensurate. This requires enterprises to take stock of the situation, not only to test the market at any time, understand the needs of the market, but also to understand their own capabilities and resources, the ability to do.

5, the Enterprise has established a good brand reputation in the customer, can resist the invasion of formidable competitor.

6, the industry is best not yet ruler.

In fact, the so-called "niche market" is in the context of product homogeneity, in small differentiated services to work hard to obtain their own users. And the "niche market" companies, they choose the point is a relatively small product, but the prospects are very large, those large enterprises do not attach importance to the market. Netac company invented the U disk is a typical success story. But the niche market for domestic cloud storage is not ideal.

At present, the so-called differentiated services provided by independent cloud storage start-ups are weak. For example, Yunno's feature is "synchronization and sharing of documents with Office Synergy", founder Shini said, "The charm of Yunno is to wait until you can feel it with two devices (PC + mobile)." But the function of Yunno can be realized not only by the Dropbox of the wall, but also by the products of large companies such as Baidu Cloud in China.

Railing Maple is 115 network disk carefully designed three pillars of business, that is, the emphasis on personal data storage and backup of the 115 network disk, on the basis of the network to highlight social functions even with virtual trading function of the "circle", as well as enterprise customers enterprise cloud. The "Circle" prototype of the 115 network is Google +, a "swarm" that allows users to find more resources. But there's a big problem with the 115 circle: are the resources shared by the user legitimate? 115 network disk is due to the rampant dissemination of resources copyright problem was closed, so large and small, to hundreds of people's circle for the spread of the unit. But when the 115 circle develops again, the nightmare of copyright will come again.

The award-winning Nut Cloud, its biggest feature is "folder intelligent synchronization" and paid for the user's growth plan, etc., its main features are difficult not to be copied by large companies, after all, this is one of the needs of users.

Niche markets also emphasize that companies already have a reputation for good brands, while independent cloud-storage start-ups are spreading only within small circles, and their reputations are not loud. There are no rulers in the industry, but there are giants that are about to become rulers. They cannot build strong barriers after they enter the market and are imitated or replaced by big companies.

Even large companies will work on differentiated services and will do everything possible to increase the functionality that users need. Whether synchronous, collaborative, intelligent services, they are the cloud storage function derived from the necessary functions, will inevitably be in the subsequent version of the corresponding functions, and ordinary users should not be for some small differentiation features easily changed.

This can not provide effective differentiated services, but also can not prevent the phenomenon of plagiarism by large companies, I might call it "chicken effect", looking at no future prospects, but 1:30 will not be defeated in the competition.

In the enterprise-level cloud storage market, is also basically divided by the big giants. Gartner recently released the top ten cloud storage vendors list 2012 years ago, and these vendors are basically able to provide some enterprise-class features, including Amazon AWS, At&t, Google, HP, IBM, Internap, Microsoft, Nirvanix, Rackspace, Softlayer. At home, several big cloud storage giants not only for personal User services, but also has turned to a broader enterprise-level market, even traditional IT service providers have started to set foot in cloud storage services, such as waves, Lenovo. Enterprise Cloud storage focuses more on data security than startups, which are more willing to choose large companies with strong capabilities.

Xiangruyimo”

In the difficult "to forget in the lake" situation, I think these startups as "more than", for the start-up companies to provide cloud storage services. Start-ups are limited in their ability to choose a cost-effective cloud storage service. Amazon AWS is a good choice, but the downside is that there is no domestic optimization. Becoming China's Amazon S3 is a "niche market" for cloud storage.

Seven cattle companies in the initial stage of preparation for a foothold in individual users, but the team after discussion that the company is best at building technical services, more suitable for the enterprise-oriented storage service providers. Seven cattle customers, including Camera 360, the text message, MiG 365, weico+ and so on, is a "pioneering company to serve the start-up company." Seven cows from the smart is the first to find the direction of their own development, in the domestic big companies and Giants have not responded to the time when there is a clear positioning and development direction. In fact, in the creation of seven cattle companies, personal-oriented cloud storage has become a hot spot and trend, has been the attention of large companies, but the situation has not intensified. As big companies begin to notice the market, seven of cows have become brand-influential companies in the industry.

Juhaibo, though not bullish on startups, also believes that, although for startups, the business market is more robust and less risky. But compared to individual users, enterprise users more professional, more picky, "if there is no technical two brushes, it is difficult to obtain their recognition." At present, the domestic technology of the entrepreneurial team, it is better to start looking for business services. I have always been very optimistic about the "nut Cloud" team, in their products, in the media access and in their blogs, reflects the skill of the team. But they are in the interview on the "service for the start-up company" attitude is still a bit tangled, I think there are seven of cattle Company's success as a reference, the nut cloud may wish to step up a greater pace.

Also take the cloud storage is also a "company". "And shoot" network is the old figure bed service, "and take cloud storage" is derived from the cloud storage companies, they look at the Enterprise Cloud host services, is a domestic Amazon S3. The team admitted in an interview that startups were their main customers. And the ancestor of the petals of the net is to "picture cloud storage" to make the characteristics of the product. In addition, as a provider of basic services, and made a very clear positioning themselves, some things can be done, there are some things can not do. such as customer access data, is the company's bottom line. In addition to the necessary billing analysis, other data analysis can not be done, to avoid the "both the referee, and athletes" phenomenon.