Business News Holding

Category: storage

  • 2014 Predictions for Cloud Storage Services

    A lot has happened in the world of cloud storage. The market has had room for new vendors like Dump Truck. 2013 saw the launch of new cloud storage devices for industries including EMC, Verizon, Lenovo and Colt Telecom. This shows that vendors expect a huge demand for cloud services. Here are the 2014 predictions for cloud storage.

    1. 1.Services are likely to close down their free storage offers

    2. Expect a Box and DropBox IPO in 2014

    3. Because of the NSA and PRISM debacle, most of the non US companies may want to stop hosting their data from the US.

    4. When handling data, most companies are more concerned with security. So, more file sharing outlets are expected to follow the SME’s lead as they try to retrofit auditing or logging in their product offers.

    5. More companies are likely to want an encryption of remote data with keys they can control. This may become a part of security playbook for companies.

    6. In 2014, companies will expect more from their storage solutions. For example, will these solutions help to solve their business issues, integrate corporate governance and aid in policy implementation?

    7. Expect big data to continue dominating hype cycles for the cloud storage vendors and expect a rise in new products as well.

  • SurDoc Gives Android Users 100GB Free Cloud Storage, Android Support, and SSL Encryption

    Android users in need of additional cloud storage need to find out SurDoc’s plans of providing free storage up to 100GB alongside SSL security encryption and Android support. You can find lots of popular cloud backup services in the industry but SurDoc offers interesting plans. Although this company has been around for some time, most Android users may not be acquainted with it.

    Currently, SurDoc has three plans for its users ranging from the 100GB to the unlimited storage plan, depending on your budget. Although the free plan comes with 100GB of storage, it has a few shortcomings such as allowing you to view or annotate just 30 docs a month.

    However, the 100GB plan of $2.5 a month eliminates some of these limitations, moving your document support to 300 docs a month. Lastly, a plan of $8.33 a month accords you unlimited storage in addition to removing other restrictions.

    Surprisingly, SurDoc suggests your cloud data is under the protection of prying eyes and than no one can access it, not even SurDoc’s staff.

    To access the SurDoc application on your Android, you should visit the Google Play Store and download it free. However, you need 4.7MB of storage and Android version of 2.2 and above. Besides, the company has Mac and PC apps that allow users to backup and manage their documents. The web interface allows users to access their own accounts using other devices.

  • SugarSync Cloud Storage Service Abandons Freemium for a Paid Account Model


    SugarSync that has long been viewed as a Gladiator in the hosted cloud storage service has decided to go mercenary. The company has announced that it is doing away with the free storage tiers for a ‘paid only’ service model. Current customers will still be able to access their files and are set to get discounts of up to 75%.

    CEO Mike Grossman said that the company has decided not to offer free storage forever. He added that SugarSync is unique as compared to other service providers because it provides more than just basic file storage. Instead, the company offers premium services that offer unprecedented control and flexibility for prosumers and small businesses over their data through the unique multisync capabilities.

    This basically means that the company is targeting more business clients. SugarSync is, in a way, pivoting since competitors like Google Drive, box and Dropbox are taking the oxygen from the casual cloud market.
    The free accounts will be closed on 8th February 2014 while users can still sign up for a 5GB 90 day trial or a 60GB 30-day trial. However, SugarSync will attempt to monetize the customers as soon as possible instead of letting you keep your free storage.

    Grossman indicated that there are many companies that giving away free storage, however, these companies may not be viable in the long run. He indicated that the company is already in a solid financial position and is set to further strengthen its business. This is definitely an interesting maneuver by one of the major players in a world with dozens of GBs for free.

  • My Cloud from Western Digital

    Nowadays, it is almost impossible to create a digital baggage. You need to start by backing up your PC’s data. Your devices also need more storage space for backups, offloading photos to storing secondary media libraries. If you think like me, then you definitely need cloud based storage services.

    With the help of a 2TB external NAS Western Digital’s WD My Cloud, you can create your personal cloud at home and consolidate your data within easy reach.  Any Wi-Fi-enabled mobile device can read and write to the drive because the external hard drive connects through Ethernet cable to your wireless router instead of the traditional USB to your PC, Android or iOS devices.

    The WD My Cloud hardware sets up instantly by plugging in the AC adapter and snapping the Ethernet cable into your wireless router. There are downloadable and administrative apps for PCs and Macs and also apps for Android and iOS mobile devices. You can also type in a URL in any browser to connect to the drive’s onboard management tools, much like you would do to gain access to your browser based dashboard on the router.

    After login in to the WD portal and creating a My Cloud password account, all your mobile devices connected can read and write to the drive whenever they are connected to Wi-Fi.

    You can move content into folders called ‘shares’ that can be either private or public. It is possible to set up permissions for users of any of the shares. You will start off with some preset shares that include a private share with your name, a public folder SmartWare folder for backups and a “TimeMachineBackup” folder for Mac users.

  • For Greater Insight And Control over Content, Cloud Storage Provider Box Buys dLoop

    Box, a cloud storage company has acquired dLoop, a data analytic firm. This acquisition is expected to add protection, enterprise content discovery and insight to Box’s platform that offers employees easy sync and sharing between several apps and devices and platforms.

    According to an announcement that was made this week, dLoop technologies is expected to provide permission level, control and visibility of files that enterprises require in order to trust cloud storage.

    The acquisition comes just a week following the announcement by Box of its intentions to raise another $100 million in venture investment that will be in form of Series E-1 Preferred stock.  This is according to a recent regulatory filing.

    Box had earlier developed a powerful admin tool that helps to protect business critical content. These tools are expected to expand following the acquisition of dLoop and offer administrators even greater safeguards on enterprise content.

    At the moment, dLoop is able to discover documents that would normally be unreachable by pattern matching solutions or the normal search. This is done by creating continuous documents graphs as well as clusters from unstructured content with the use of machine-learning algorithms that find related and relevant content.

    Following the announcement, dLoop co-founder Divya Jain will be joining Box in order to lead their efforts in advanced content analysis and data classification.

  • Bitcasa Announces a Tenfold Increase in Unlimited Cloud Storage Pricing

    Cloud storage provider, Bitcasa that has established itself as a provider of unlimited cloud storage invoked the wrath of its customers this week when it unveiled a new pricing scheme that increased its unlimited storage plan tenfold. However, there is a good chance that the new price scheme will not affect all customers.

    Bitcasa, up until this price increase was charging organizations $99 annually for the unlimited cloud storage, but this price has been bumped up to $999. According to Brian Taptich, Bitcasa CEO, the current pricing plans for existing customers will not change. Besides, 98% of Bitcasa’s customers use less than 5TB of data in the cloud. Taptich further noted that 92% of the customers use less than 1TB.

    New customers will be affected and 1TB of data will ring at $99 annually but it will not make a big difference considering the amount of data Taptich said that customers use. Those who will be most affected will be the ones who are looking for a large amount of storage.

    New customers on 5TB storage plan will pay $499 annually while the unlimited plan will cost $999 annually. The free plan will also be changing, with old customers keeping their 10GB of free storage while new customers will be provided with 5GB of free storage instead.

    The new changes will not affect the current customers for now but it has certainly not been received well by Bitcasa’s followers.

    Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT, termed the price increase as ‘breathtaking’, although he indicated that the reasoning seems sensible. He further noted that the growing competition will keep pressure on Bitcasa.

  • Western Digital Announces My Cloud EX4 Four-Bay Personal Cloud Storage System That Holds Up To 16 TB of Data


    WD has announced the WD My Cloud EX4, a new personal storage application. The new cloud storage is a high performance and 4 bay network attached storage device that is aimed at workgroup and pros users. The storage system is ideal for home or office users who are looking for a way to manage and backup large amounts of data.

    My Cloud EX4 is available in several capacities and the users can purchase the enclosure only and then make use of their own hard drives. The units are available with preloaded hard drives with capacities of 8 TB, 12 TB or 16 TB. Personal drives can be hot-swapped or installed easily and quickly without the need of any tool.

    The device also features a USB expansion port on the back, which allows users to attach compatible USB hard drives to increase the storage capacity. The enclosure provides you with several options for securing data including JBOD as well as RAID 0, 1, 5, 10. The device is shipped together with WD SmartWare Pro software, which allows multiple PC users to back up to the My Cloud EX4.

    Mac users are also able to use the Apple Time Machine backup software for data backups. The My Cloud EX4 device is capable of backing up data from internal drives to cloud services such as ElephantDrive or Amazon S3. The device is currently available for sale at a cost of $379.99 for the enclosure, 8TB version for $799.99, 12 TB versions for $949.99 and the 16 TB versions for $1149.99.

  • $25 Million Raised by Coho Data for Cloud Storage

    Ignition Partners, a new investor in Coho Data has helped the company to raise $25 million. Andreessen Horowitz, an existing investor was also involved in the funding round.

    With the funding, Ignition Partners has seen their managing director, Frank Artale join Coho’s board of directors.

    Coho Data is involved in the provision of cloud-based storage facilities for its clients.

    The company has just emerged from stealth mode last month and it has indicated that it will use the funds to set up research and development as well as marketing. This will be done as the company prepares to launch its DataStream product later in the year.

    The startup was launched in 2011 and has offices in Vancouver, Sunnyvale and British Columbia.

  • Seagate Disrupts Cloud Economics with Storage That Can Cut Infrastructure Costs by 50%

    The internet cloud storage stage is set to change following the launch of a new platform. The product is the brainchild of Seagate, a firm situated in Cupertino, California. Among the benefits of the new platform include reduced infrastructural cost, improved scalability and performance. It also makes data management simple.
    Among the salient features of this platform is that it eliminates the need for data centers. Users do not have to procure large storage devices. Organizations are able to maximize on savings owing to the reduction in the amount of hardware required as well as power costs.

    Rocky Pimentel, an executive official from Seagate said that their teams designed a unique platform that would minimize expenditure on unnecessary software and hardware. He added that IT personnel would make use of a cost effective technology that would save their organizations a lot of money.

    Yahoo is one of the clients giving the new technology a trial. Yahoo’s Kevin Graham said the company was continuously searching for ways of becoming more efficient while simplifying its infrastructure. Graham added that Yahoo had been consulting Seagate on ways through which the Kinetic Open Storage platform can yield an efficient and reliable way of storing Yahoo’s user data.

    An interface intended to enable connection from client to hard drives owned by Seagate will soon be launched. Seagate has acknowledged the help it has received from other companies. These include SwiftStack, Supermicro, Newisys, Rackspace, Huawei, EVault, Basho Technologies and Dell among others.

    Seagate’s core business has all along been the provision of virtual storage space. The new ambitious project, Kinetic Open Storage platform may soon change the way data centers should be formulated. Laura Dubois an authority within the industry reckons that the new technology has the potential to bring changes in the way storage is done.