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Tag: dropbox

  • Vodafone and Dropbox Team up on Cloud Storage

    Vodafone and Dropbox Team up on Cloud Storage

    vodafone-dropbox

    Vodafone and Dropbox are partnering to provide the telco’s Android and iPhone users with free cloud storage for a year.

    Starting this month, new Vodafone users will have 25 GB of cloud storage space on Dropbox. This service will be available to Vodafone’s Android and iPhone users. A majority of Vodafone’s Android phones will come preloaded with the Dropbbox app.

    What’s the implication? Well, Vodafone users can now count on extra space that can also make switching over to a new phone a much easier process as all you have to do is save all your videos, photos, and all your files on your old phone to Dropbox and then just sign in to your Dropbox app in your new phone and all your files will be there waiting for you.

    Vodafone also said that it will use Dropbox as its platform for its Backup+ service that allows Vodafone users to backup messages, multimedia content, and contacts on the cloud. The Backup+ service will start rolling out by the end of March, 2015 and will be ready for use over the coming months.

    The partnership between Dropbox and Vodafone is not entirely a new concept as just last year around October 02 entered a partnership with Box to resell the cloud storage service to SMEs.

     

  • Seagate’s New Inexpensive Cloud Storage Favors Small Businesses

    Seagate’s New Inexpensive Cloud Storage Favors Small Businesses

    seagate-personal-cloud

    Google Drive, One Drive, or Dropbox have all become popular with cloud storage but there is a new wave blowing – that of personal cloud data storage and to this end Seagate has stepped in to provide Personal Cloud service.

    The storage giant showcased its new Iaas, Infrastructure-as-a-Service products at the CES 2015. According to Seagate, their aim is to provide storage services to individuals who wish to access music, photos, and videos anytime anywhere and they will be able to do so using their phones and tablets. Small businesses can also benefit from the service as they are able to securely store, retrieve and share data stored on the personal cloud drive.

    Small businesses are bound to benefit from this service more than individual customers. Why so? For starters, the storage space. The personal cloud line offers 3-5 terabytes while the personal cloud 2 bay line gives 4, 6, and 8 TB.

    Here is another reason, for security reasons. Personal cloud 2 bay can be set up in RAID( Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks) 1 mode or better yet, it is possible to use all storage for file storage.

    The device is compatible with the Apple Time Machine and continously and automatically backs up windows and mac. Apart fom the storage devices being NAS, they can also compliment public cloud service when configured. Better yet, they can automatically back up to the popular providers like HiDrive, DropBox, Amazon S3, Baidu, Box, and Yandex disk. The device has an option where it can be synced to Google Drive, Baidu and DropBox.

    Additional apps can be installed as the device has a built-in app manager. BitTorrent Sync, ElephantDrive and WordPress can all be installed. Also, the software development kit enables third-party developers to come up with their own services or to intergrate such with web based and other cloud services.

    This service is benefitial to individuals but more benefitial to small businesses. Considering businesses are out to reduce their cost, this would work well for them as its inexpensive.`

  • Microsoft Ups Storage 5,000% to 1 TB for Each Office 365 User

    Microsoft Ups Storage 5,000% to 1 TB for Each Office 365 User

    office-365

    Microsoft bumped up its cloud storage increasing it from 20 GB to 1 TB for every Office 365 user. It also increased its Microsoft OneDrive from 7 GB to 15 GB. According to Microsoft’s data, out of every four people, three have storage of less than 15 GB on their PC.

    This storage boost has put Microsoft in the forefront when compared to Google and Dropbox, as far as free allocation goes. The Free Dropbox accounts get a sparing 2GB, even though it may be expanded through signing up friends. While Google may offer 15 GB free cloud storage, it includes Gmail, Drive and Photos.

    In addition, Microsoft has also lowered the price of purchasing additional storage to$2 per month from the previous cost of $7.50 per month for 100 GB.

    Office 365 storage

    So if you are thinking of getting more than an extra 100 GB, you will be better of switching to an Office 365 account, as all Office 365 account holders get storage increase to 1TB.

    A personal Office 365 subscription costs $6.99 per month and comes with 1 TB for every user while the Home Office 365 subscription costs up to $9.99 monthly and comes with approximately five 1TB OneDrive allocations.

    An earlier announcement by Microsoft also revealed that OneDrive for Business clients as well as university students also get a boost to 1 TB.

    All the changes are expected to be effected this month, according to Microsoft.

     

     

  • Dell and Dropbox Partner on a Business Cloud Storage Push


    Hardware giant Dell has formed a partnership with cloud storage provider Dropbox to sell the business focused cloud storage product through its sales network. The deal aims at helping businesses "meet today’s employee’s expectations for cloud based services."

    Dell will bundle Dropbox’s corporate offering, Dropbox for business with its data protection cloud proposition. According to the company, the move will ensure that the IT Company meets regulatory requirements and also maintain control over sharing.

    Brett Hansen, the executive director of end user computing software at Dell noted that Dropbox was one of the fastest growing, most innovative and most popular solution of its kind. He further noted that through the Dell global ales team, both companies can help organizations of different sizes protect data while embracing consumerisation of IT.

    Global vice president of partnerships at Dropbox, Marc Leibowitz added that Dropbox has always focused in providing a simple and elegant way of accessing their most important stuff. He also noted that Dell offers scalable, innovative and back-end expertise that help to empower IT administrators as well as the end users. The shared values of manageability, simplicity and security make Dell an ideal strategic partner.

    Dell and Dropbox indicated that they will be announcing the developments across Dell’s commercial and consumer client platforms in the coming months. However, they did not expound on when the changes are likely to appear.

    Image: TechMalaysia

  • Loaded and locked – 3 seriously secure cloud storage services


    Some of the popular, efficient and convenient cloud storage services like Google Drive, Dropbox, and SugarSync can sometimes be insecure. Your files may be accessible to companies due to the lack of encryption and unprotected data transfers. Before uploading sensitive files to the large storage services you can use smaller, more secure cloud storage services like Wuala and Tresorit to encrypt the files. Alternatively, you can encrypt the files yourself.

    Wuala

    Wuala is compatible with Linux, iOS, Windows, and Android operating systems. Its first 5GB storage space is free and its packages cost starts from $4 per month for 20GB storage space.

    LaCie is the company behind the Wuala cloud storage company, and it offers unique services in two ways;
    Encryption of files by clients: you are in charge of your file encryption on your device prior to uploading it it the cloud. This ensures that only you can gain access to the uploaded data, making data transfer extremely secure.

    Password confidentiality: You are the only person who has access to your password and not even Wuala employees are able to know it. This means that forgetting your password would give you a very nasty experience trying to access your files.

    Tresorit

    Tresorit is compatible with Mac OS X, Widows, iOS, and Android operating systems. 5GB is free and its package price starts at $7 per month for 100GB of storage space.

    Tresorit provides secure data transfers and data centers able to protect data against data invasion as well as client side encryption.

    Tresorit’s client side data encryption is similar to that of Wuala in terms of confidential password protection. A differentiating feature is the ability to secure any folder on your device by just ‘tresor-ing’ it. This means that you can right click on any folder and secure it.

    McAfee personal locker

    This cloud storage service is compatible with Android, Windows 8, and iOS operating systems. All McAfee LiveSafe subscribers get 1 GB free storage space.

    Its features include a PIN, face and voice recognition security measures, which you will have to go through to access high priority files. Low priority files only require a PIN to gain access.

    Local File Encryption

    Instead of going through the wearisome task of getting a new cloud storage service, applications like TrueCrypt will be useful in helping you encrypt your data inside your cloud folder. This will work well in keeping your files safe and secure.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Cloud Storage Supports Genealogists

    The benefits of Cloud Storage have been brought to bear in many different industries, from finance to real estate and certainly personal computing. But genealogists have been taking advantage of the off-site storage with more and more frequency, due to the safety and security it offers.

    Genealogists spend years researching their findings, and the specter of losing all of that effort can be terrifying. Cloud Storage completely removes those fears. If a genealogist experiences a malfunctioning hard drive, it could cost them dearly. With all of their data stored in the cloud, no type of physical storage issue, no matter how extreme, can cause the irrevocable loss of work.

    Another useful benefit of Cloud Storage is the fact that data can be accessed from several different devices, in a variety of locations. That means a genealogist can access the same file and continue his work, whether on a personal computer, an office workstation, or a mobile device in transit between the two.

    File-sharing is also made much easier thanks to Cloud Storage technology. Many genealogists must share their findings regularly with associates, and also want to deliver summations to clients and family. Many Cloud Storage services come with file-sharing built in. If both parties have a Dropbox, SkyDrive or Box account, they can access and download files from any of their devices, making the sharing of even the most complicated or lengthy genealogy report an instant endeavor.

    Cloud Storage probably won’t completely take the place of physical storage, at least not until several more years of consistent, worry-free service are accrued. But at some point, the physical hard drive might end up a relic of the past, much like the names genealogists pour over during their studies.

  • Dropbox Spam Attack Underlines Possible Security Issues with Cloud Storage

    Dropbox is currently one of the industry leaders in cloud storage, alongside products like RapidShare, Google Drive and MediaFire. But when Dropbox became the target of a fairly major spam attack, even those that promote cloud computing had to admit that cloud storage poses a real security issue for IT professionals.

    The spam attack that Dropbox users experienced was traced back to the source, specifically one particular user who didn’t follow the basic rules of password security. A hacker snagged several users’ log-in information off a wide range of site, including the info of a current Dropbox employee, and discovered that employee used the same password and login for his Dropbox account as he did on the other sites. He accessed the employee Dropbox account and discovered a document filed with email addresses for other users. The result was tons of spam messages pushing Dropbox users to gambling sites.

    Although this problem was fairly minor in the grand scheme of things, it underlines the larger problem. Something much more sinister could have been introduced to the system, or the hacker could have figured out how to access some of the data stored on the Dropbox cloud. It starts with the individual’s misuse of passwords, but it also suggests that cloud storage employees may not be taking their responsibilities as seriously as they should.

    This time it was a list of emails, and that list was included without an additional password or any sort of encryption. Next time it could be government paperwork, or banking and medical records. Dropbox responded strongly to the issue, declaring they will instantly be incorporating security changes.

    Those changes will include an additional piece of identity proof during the sign-in authentication process, automated checks through the system searching out suspicious actions, a way for users to review their log-in history, and frequent requests to change passwords.

    It’s never going to be foolproof, but it is a solid step in the right direction. IT administrators will need to take a lesson from the Dropbox fiasco, and remind their coworkers about the need for heightened security. With billions of files now stored on the cloud, there’s simply too much data at risk to stand idly by.