Windows Live Mesh and its future

April 23, 2008 – 12:42 am

                                      

Readwriteweb reports that “A mysterious project believed to tie together a number of different technologies acquired in recent years - the best guess is that Live Mesh will let users sync files on multiple computers and mobile devices via the web.

Collaboration on documents may be a part of the product as well. It’s expected to be a simple, but powerful, service. A number of questions remain, however.”

Techcrunch  has an interesting take on this topic as well.

We believe that it is an interesting idea, but has been attempted before with only partial success by some. This is basically about tying together various web based services such as syncing, document sharing, editing, collaborating between devices.

You need a strong set of web based services to begin with. Microsoft does not have it. If there is any company that has the basic tools to work with, it is Google. They have the best document editing, sharing and collaboration and email service out there on the web today.  They also have the best mobile application set for email.  Adding sync and a few other services is just a matter of time.

Microsoft is on the right path, but they simply will not reach the destination as they do not have necessary firepower in web based services.

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IDrive getting ready to launch Online Backup for Mac

April 22, 2008 – 3:29 pm

IDrive is getting ready to launch its Online Backup application for the Mac platform shortly.

Apple is enjoying a phenomenal run for its entire product line from ipods to imacs. So it is a no-brainer that application developers are rushing to develop their wares for the iphones and imacs. IDrive sees that there are few options available for online backup with reasonable price points and sees a market opportunity. The timing is right for an online backup application for the Mac platform. Price points for the Mac option are likely to be in line with its windows offerings, at $4.95/month for the unlimited option for consumers and $9.95/month for 50GB for business users.

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Amazon S3, Cloud Storage and more..

April 21, 2008 – 6:19 pm

                                              

Techcrunch just published an article on success of Amazon’s S3 and cloud computing in general. The numbers quoted by Amazon sounds impressive. A whopping 130 Million is a huge number by any standards, except for a company of the size and scale of Amazon. What is surprising is also the fact that the biggest users are NOT the startup companies, but larger corporations in general.

This certainly lends to the fact that cloud storage has arrived.  But is this for every one? It seems to be a great option, if you are running desktop applications and you need web storage. You get cheap reliable storage - this is the main USP.  Now, what if you are a web based photo storage service? You can still enjoy the advantages for your desktop client, but how about the web interface itself?

You would probably end up paying for the bandwidth twice, one to your S3 service, and another to your hosting provider where you are hosting the photo storage service since your browser application will need to make two traversals, one from S3 to your host, and again from the host to the user.

So, start ups will have to think carefully on using S3 who essentially have a browser based application and are using S3 for storage.

But without question, S3 is a huge success and there will be lots of me too’s.

 

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What is wrong with GDrive? Web?

April 20, 2008 – 4:06 pm

 

 

Over the last few years, there have been many who predicted near launch of GDrive. Techcrunch among others have been covering this story for months, actually years. Still, why does GDrive not see the light of the day?

I, being from the online storage background have my own spin. It is not the technology of online storage that is holding GDrive back; in fact, they are the king of cloud storage. It is that they just know cloud storage and internet too well that they are holding its launch. Why?

Let us start with Google’s business model. They make most from their search and advertisement, through their own and on third party sites. It is absolutely essential that users have good fast and clean access to internet for them to search and eventually click on the ads.

What happens with GDrive launch? GDrive is not a GMail type of search where the amount of data flow to and from a user is usually limited to a few megabytes a day (there are exceptions, but I’m generally talking about average here). With a GDrive account that would possibly have some free limits (say anywhere between 2GBs to 10GB), every potential user will probably end up pushing multiple GBs of data, at least for the initial transfers. Imagine millions of users doing this!

The net effect would be even worse that what what music sharing sites did in the 90s, GDrive could account for a large chunk of internet traffic virtually making it crawl. The worst hit company with a slow internet is none other than Google!    Its search revenue would be hit big time. There is absolutely nothing that would be more joyous to Microsoft that something that affects Google in a negative way.

Well, if this affects Google, it should happen the same, even if someone else, say Microsoft launches a similar service. (Actually they already have one, it is called skydrive). It is not the same. Microsoft simply does not have the web reach of google, nor is its skydrive service anywhere close to what GDrive could be. It will have only a marginal effect.

So my guess is that GDrive is ready, but the web is not ready for GDrive yet. How far it is likely to be down the road? Not too far, but not in near future either.

                              

In the meanwhile, the likes of BOX.NET, IBackup, XDrive, skydrive and others may do well for a while, but ONLY for a while.

Disclaimer: The author is President/CEO of Pro Softnet Corp, an online backup, storage and sharing services company.

 

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