Business News Holding

Category: storage

  • Google Drive and its Game-Changing Strategy

    Google Drive has recently unleashed a storage structure that is set to change the way people view cloud storage. They have now made it possible to have online storage no matter the size. For the first 15Gb per month no fee will be charged, $1.99 for 100GB, $9.99 for 1TB and $99.99 for 10TB and above. Their new price structure makes it easier to afford online storage especially for large companies.

    Let’s compare Google drive data plan with other plans. Sugar sync charges $55 for a terabyte of data of up to three users while this cost $10 a month at Google drive. Dropbox charges $9.99 for a month’s 100 GB while Google drive offers the same space at around $2 a month. Apple charges $8.33 a month for 50 GB storage while you can be able to double that storage size for a much lesser fee. The most popular cloud service S3 cloud service offers a terabyte of storage space at $85 a month while on Google drive a terabyte cost around $10. Finally Microsoft which offer annual data plans offers 50 GB at $25 for the year while one can be able to get much more data storage and almost the same price.

    With the changes in prices in Google drives data plans, the other companies will try to lower their costs hence making online data storage that was once viewed as an expensive venture more affordable to many people and companies at a regular fee. Now more money will go into the company as opposed to it going into storage Plans for the company. This will be beneficial in making cloud storage one of the most used storage options and thereby lessening the use of traditional storage means. Just by simply changing their price structure, Google drive has been able to revolutionize how cloud storage is viewed.

  • How to Manage All Cloud Storage Services Under One Site


    Most people, and companies too, have multiple cloud storage accounts and at times it might be very hard to handle and manage all these accounts separately. Luckily, there is a way you can now access all your storage accounts at the same time. Welcome Multcloud.com, an online site that gives you access to your entire cloud storage under one platform. The site allows you to view your document, transfer them from one cloud to the other among other actions.

    To get access to the site, there are simple steps to follow.

    1. Go to multcloud.com and select the create an account option.

    2. Fill out the registration form and it is better to use a secure password that isn’t  related to any others that you use on the other cloud sites. This will make your Multcloud account more secure.

    3. After completing your registration, click on send and a confirmation link will be sent to your email. Click on the link to complete the registration process.

    4. After, the screen will show the different cloud serves and clicking on the logo will direct you to the site to start the linking process.

    5. After clicking on the logo, click on the blue logo to add the site and to give Multcloud permission to access your account on that cloud service provider.

    6. After adding all your accounts, the page changes to reveal a list of files.

    7. Finally, double click on the file you want to view just like you would on any file.

  • Amazon Lowers Its Cloud Prices after Google Slash

    Recent cut by Amazon of its cloud prices are still not enough to rival Google's cloud storage prices. The slash by amazon comes after Google announced a reduction of its storage costs – Google made a reduction on its pricing by a very high margin compared to those of their competitors such as Microsoft, Rackspace, and HP.

    Google newly introduced "sustained use" pricing model has enabled it to pass savings onto users of its cloud. This compares to Amazons model, which guarantee customers saving after they pay upfront.

    Amazon`s senior vice president defended its stand on not responding to Google new model. He said that the company lowered their prices on many occasions without any external or competitive pressure.

    Amazon and Google seem to be at the same level though their prices on key areas such as storage are still significantly different. Google has a flat rate pricing for storage while Amazon does tiered pricing.

    Amazon`s price change indicates an emerging competition among businesses offering cloud computing services. Amazon's strategy, using lower prices, has enabled it to build a successful brand. Google price change is a threat, one that deserves a response, to its cloud business margins. This comes at a time when Google and Microsoft have made continuous investment aimed at grabbing a portion of the revenue streaming into Amazon Web Services.

    Both companies have being experiencing problems that affect their core businesses. Google, for instance, has closed some of its business such as Google Reader and Wave and at times made price changes without warning their customers. This has negatively affected their customers who are now skeptical of their innovations.

    Microsoft despite having the most successful software business customers are suspicious of their products as they will be difficult to license or be costly.
    Amazon`s core business-retail- ensures use of cheap storage, ideal cloud computing, and relatively low margins.

  • Microsoft SkyDrive is now OneDrive

    Microsoft’s newly rebranded OneDrive from the old SkyDrive cloud storage platform came with new features and the company threw in a few promotions during its launch.

    Following a British court ruling that found Microsoft in violation of the British Sky Broadcasting group trademark, Microsoft consented to let go of SkyDrive as the name for its cloud storage platform in July. The OneDrive brand was shared with the public in January and the official rebranding took place early this February.

    The new brand comes with a new feature that enables the sharing of videos and the Android version of it getting an automated photo back up.

    OneDrive is Microsoft’s competition for cloud storage services like Google Drive from Google, DropBox, and iCloud from Apple. The stiff competition has not stopped the growth of the brands popularity as users of the service have reached up to 250 M. OneDrive is an integral part of Microsoft’s ‘One Microsoft’ strategy and with the fresh attention it is getting because of the rebranding, the cloud storage service may be in for some more growth.

    The promotions that Microsoft has come up with might actually do them some good in attracting new users. Everyone gets 7 GB free storage space and an additional 3 GB for mobile phone owners using its photo back up feature. Referring a friend to the service will get you 500 MB for every new invite to a 5GB maximum.
    Microsoft reassured old users of the continuity of the product, mentioning that existing storage would have no impact except the incorporation of the new built-in-video trans-coding feature which enables video storage and adjustment of video resolution to match the viewer’s display.

    Even with its growing brand success, Microsoft seems know that there still exists a challenge when it comes to cross platform usage of the services. They have tried balancing the accessibility of the service on competing devices without affecting the demand of their devices.

    The cloud storage service, for example, is not available on the iPad and Android tablet and this is Microsoft’s strategy of avoiding an effect on the demand for its windows tablet. While the companies deal with the balancing act, we are looking forward to any new products and enhancements coming our way.

  • Duracell Ventures into the Lucrative Cloud Storage Market

    Duracell, the battery maker and a subsidiary of Gillette is now offering cloud storage services. The service is offered at an intriguing monthly rate of $US199 for 2TB storage. There is a vast difference between batteries and cloud storage batteries and many people are wondering why Duracell has taken up this venture.

    A dig through the cloud storage service by Duracell indicates that it is not entirely in the business. It mentions Condre, a value added reseller as well as cloud facilitators offering the backup as a service. The facilitators of Condre also offer NAS/cloud storage functions.

    It has not been established whether Duracell is fronting Condre or whether Condre is using the name of Duracell. However, pundits are of the view that Duracell is poised to deliver on its claims of being 250-1000 times quicker than its rivals in the cloud storage service. The cloud storage service also includes the share n sync functions for shuttling data amongst mobile devices and PCs. This is done through the cloud backup as well as a web portal to enable access of data.

    The Duracell’s suite indicates collaboration with StorZon, which is a trademark that is held by Condre. It is said to offer cloud storage services that are Geodiverse including two data centers. Duracell indicates that the data will be stored twice on the premises and twice on the cloud. For now, the service looks to be US only.

  • Tintri Zero Management Storage sets eye on Australia


    For the establishment of its Melbourne Headquarters that will be its technical APAC center, Tintri Zero Management Storage, a Californian based company, has decided to set up office in Australia as it acts on its intention to get into the Australian market. It has chosen Melbourne as the most strategic place to set up its office as it strengthens its operations in the Asia – Pacific (APAC) region.

    As the technical hub for the region, the office will run the channel management, marketing, sales and pre sales engineering sections of the company in the area.

    Peter Molloy, Tintri’s vice president stated that the strategic choice of Melbourne as the location for their local office was based on the city’s good history of hosting beginner IT business enterprises.

    He said that the good number of big organizations based in the city had a chance of gaining from disruptive technology that comes from strong innovation and adoption of new technologies which thrive in Melbourne city.According to him, transportation of product in the city will be easy and simple due to the effective and efficient freight and distribution system the city.

    The 30 high – value ICT jobs that Tintri will be creating by the move to set up office in the state of Victoria will go a play an appreciated part of growing and developing the industry in the state.

    The Victoria Coalition Government is in full support of the move and Gordon Rich-Phillips, the Minister for Technology commended Tintri’s move into the state of Victoria which has a diverse ICT environment, stating that Tintri’s storage platforms would be beneficial to the various big organizations in the state.

    Tintri has created a unique storage model known as the VM store which it claims maximizes storage for virtualized and cloud environments. This chief product is made with their innovative VM-Aware Storage architecture which is said to have the intelligence to maximize storage though understanding virtual machines.

    The company is said to have doubled its customer base worldwide having concluded the year 2013 with a 115% growth. Tintri intends to raise capital through an IPO in 2015 to increase their global investment.

  • Cloud storage firm Dropbox selects Dublin city centre office

    Dropbox have decided to settle in over 5,0002 m spread over two floors at Hatch Street, Dublin.

    They first made public their intention to establish an international office at Dublin in 2012 and they are already making strides by recruiting more staff to increase their number from 15 to over 50 people to advance their business in Europe.

    According to Johann Butting, Dropbox country manager, Graduates and newly working people are being absorbed into the organization through the ‘DropBox Associate Programme’ which will train the associates both in Europe and San Francisco. He says that the training will help the new recruits understand and appreciate the organization’s ways of operation.

    He pointed out that Dropbox is interested in recruiting people able to analyze things, good communicators or those who just bring excitement into the business with the sales and operations skills most desired. Also, many of the new positions may require knowledge of a main European language.

    The small number of staff that Dropbox has enables it to highlight all of them on their website and the company country manager thinks it’s an important strategy in promotion of future employees.

    Since its inception in 2009, Dropbox has grown to almost 200 million users notwithstanding its small size. The fact that it is a new organization allows its staff to be more creative in their activities than they would otherwise be in an older organization.

    Mr. Butting claims that the significant number of clients that they have in Europe, which is growing fast, is their main reason for setting up office in Europe and not the assumed tax benefits that most international companies seek in Ireland.  According to him, Dropbox are interested in being close to their clients in Europe in order to make their services better.

  • Amazon Steps up the Pressure with More Storage Price Cuts

    In a move that has left many of their competitors stranded, Amazon has announced that it will reduce the prices for two of its most popular storage products. The announcement that was made by the public cloud leader through a blog post will take effect from February and will affect the S3 storing of files service and the Elastic Block Store that holds information from databases. These price drops might seem too little but is actually substantial.  The customers who store more than 5000 TB on S3 a month will receive a 22 percent decrease, which is a reduction in cost per gigabyte from 5.5 cents to 4.3 cents.

    Two new slices of physical servers that are able to handle computing workloads were also announced. These options are m3.large and m3.medium.They are good not only for legacy applications and databases, but they also have many other uses. The good thing about these instances is that they can be used on any applications not those that require heavy duty graphics or memory resources.

    This drop makes it the 40th price drop by the company. The lowering of prices and launching of new features is a strategy Amazon frequently uses. This is because many companies choose it, thus they are able to buy the products in bulk and later customize it to suit the customers’ needs. The reduction of price mostly helps to make the company more attractive to  the customers .Other companies like Rackspace, Microsoft and Google also try to play the price reduction card  but  Amazon always tops them by coming up with new things that pose a great challenge to the competition. With this latest reduction, Amazon has made things worse for the other companies.

  • Hadoop’s Google Cloud Storage Connector Launched as Cloud Providers Prioritize Data Analytic


    For a long time, Google cloud storage has been running Hadoop that enables developers to perform advanced analytics on its platform. Now Google has developed a connector as it tries to simplify the process of running Hadoop on the cloud platform.

    The connector will manage the file and cluster system for the developers in order for them to concentrate on the logic of data processing instead of dealing with the complexity of setting and managing it by themselves.

    The Google file system was originally developed in 2003. The file system is now the basis for Hadoop that is managed by Apache. It is an open source computing environment that enables the storage of data on server clusters as small pieces before they are processed to perform data analytics. Companies such as Hortonworks and Cloudera have made Hadoop a diverse ecosystem.

    The new connector for Hadoop is primarily based on the Colossus, which is the latest iteration of Google’s cloud storage system. Users are now able to leverage on Google’s expertise in the processing of large data since Hadoop is able to run directly against the cloud storage using a simple connector library.

    Hadoop is now one of the leading players in the world of data-analytics. It is a significant technology for companies such as twitter that need to process their data by the petabyte. Traditional organizations are increasingly seeking to make use of Hadoop in order to process unprecedented amounts of data.

  • Cloud Storage Services Linked With Apps by Cloud Elements Hub

    A one-to-many document hub integration platform has been created by Cloud Elements that will offer a single API for developers to link cloud applications with the leading cloud storage and document services such as SkyDrive, Dropbox, Microsoft SharePoint, and Box.

    The company has also indicated that the new document hub will have support for Rackspace Files and Amazon S3 by early 2014.

    Cloud elements is extremely talented in creating ‘elements’ that are extensions of API’s whose main work is to speed up the integration of various cloud services. The company serves both SaaS developers as well as corporate IT teams that aim at integrating their applications with a variety of cloud services.

    In the past, such integration required the use of custom written integrations that always had to be updated.

    The CEO of SlideFish, Neil Smith indicated that the new elements from the company have taken a lot of pain from them. He indicated that the company will no longer have to worry about changes on the API from different cloud storage providers. This will enable such SaaS companies to integrate their services in a large scale at a faster and more reliable way than before.