Google Drive document lists go down, then come back up
Google Drive had another service disruption on Friday, and it probably doesn’t help Google’s efforts to woo enterprises onto Google Apps and other Google cloud products. Read more »
Box acquires Crocodoc to make document previews richer
photo: Jordan Novet
Box wants to make document sharing and collaborating “consumer-grade,” and it’s moving forward on that journey with the acquisition of the PDF-to-HTML5 converting company Crocodoc. Read more »
Dropbox to host first-ever developers conference this summer
What better way to draw developers to your platform than by hosting a developers conference? That’s exactly what Dropbox is going to do. Read more »
Box gets hip to HIPAA, adds health-record apps
photo: Box
Box says it’s serious about bringing on health care customers by announcing compliance with HIPAA regulations and the adding 10 health care-oriented partner applications. Read more »
Amazon S3 goes exponential, now stores 2 trillion objects
Less than year after hitting the 1 trillion object mark, Amazon S3 is now storing more than 2 trillion objects. That’s a lot any way you slice it and highlights AWS’s role as an underpinning of today’s web. Read more »
Searching for document hidden in multiple clouds? Simplexo wants to help you with that
photo: Simplexo
Employees use multiple cloud services, and IT wants document security. Enter Simplexo with its SearchYourCloud software for encryption and searching across multiple cloud storage services. Read more »
Chrome OS file manager could get integration with Dropbox, other cloud drives
Could any other cloud storage services get integrated into Google’s Chrome OS or will Google Drive be it? Others could be added if this feature enhancement request is approved and coded. Read more »
Egnyte opens up cloud options for its storage service
Up till now, Egnyte customers could manage their storage in house or on Egnyte’s cloud. Now they can use EgnytePlus to move stuff among and between Amazon, Google and NetApp clouds as well. Read more »
Box woos the enterprise with more security features, partnerships
File-share-and-sync vendor Box will announce more enterprise-friendly security features and alliances at the RSA Conference on Monday. Read more »
Microsoft Azure storage ends the week with a bang — and not in a good way
photo: Flickr / getinet
Microsoft Azure, which started the week with kudos as the best cloud storage service, is down and out on Friday. Read more »
Basho Technologies takes aim at more enterprises with upgrades
photo: Riak
More connections among clusters of customer data allow for faster replicating across multiple data centers in the latest version of Riak’s open-source NoSQL distributed database. Read more »
It turns out a lot of companies like building their own storage gear
photo: Backblaze
Backblaze pioneered the concept of open source storage hardware in 2009, and its designs have caught on. Hundreds of institutions — including Netflix and Shutterfly — use the designs, which have just entered their third generation. Read more »
OnApp’s federated cloud storage platform hits production
As a major step in its quest to take on Amazon in a federated fashion, the OnApp Cloud platform now includes fully-fledged distributed storage, VMware support and a more useful federated CDN. Read more »
The man behind Google Docs is now trying to reinvent the web app at Box
photo: Google Ventures
Box VP of Engineering Sam Schillace talks about building the service that became Google Docs, then fighting for the service’s life, and now rethinking collaboration for the mobile web. Read more »
Cloudyn says it exposes hidden Amazon storage costs and you’d be surprised how big they are
photo: Flickr / getinet
Do you know how much Amazon storage you’re using? Do you really? Cloudyn says it can tell you the real data and recommend ways to cut costs. Read more »
Box trots out IBM, Oracle integrations to boost its enterprise cred
As enterprise software companies build their own Box functionality, Box is wooing them to integrate with its own file-share-sync-and collaboration service. Read more »
Where Kim Dotcom and Mega have the edge on Dropbox and Box.net
Alleged pirate Kim Dotcom’s latest venture, Mega, tackles cloud storage. Whatever Dotcom’s motives, Andy Manoske, of GGV Capital, says his startup is bringing a much-needed upgrade to security standards for the cloud storage business. Read more »
Dropbox drops the ball
Dropbox crashed and burned Thursday afternoon as users reported they were unable to access or synchronize their files. Dropbox acknowledged the problem but assured users that their data remains safe. Read more »
So much for a BlackBerry cloud: RIM sells NewBay to Synchronoss
photo: Flickr / fontplaydotcom
A year ago RIM bought NewBay, presumably to join Apple and Google in the cloud storage and synch arena. Now it’s selling NewBay at a steep discount to Synchronoss. Maybe a consumer-focused BlackBerry cloud services platform isn’t in RIM’s future after all. Read more »
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The role of converged infrastructure in the data center
Cloud computing’s increased performance cannot be sustained if the corresponding cost to the service provider (SP) for delivering this performance also increases. What service providers need is a way of delivering low latency, fast response, and increasing performance while minimizing the cost of the network. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
This week in cloud: Rackspace and Cloudant team; OpenNebula updates
photo: Shutterstock / winui
Cloudant aims for cloud ubiquity with Rackspace partnership; OpenNebula offers private testing cloud inside Amazon Web Services; and Dell vows (late) OpenStack-based public cloud, partners with Inktank on Ceph storage. Read more »
Microsoft brings your photos to Xbox 360 via new SkyDrive app
You want to star on your Xbox 360? A new app makes it easy to view your personal photos and videos on the big screen and to manipulate them with Kinect or voice controls. Read more »
Microsoft sells Azure storage like a smartphone: free device with contract
Microsoft to customers; Buy some storage and get a $138K StorSimple appliance for free! This is just the latest proof point showing that big cloud purveyors see storage as the gateway to broader cloud service sales. Read more »
Storage: the crack cocaine of cloud computing
photo: Flickr / getinet
Storage price slashing continues as Microsoft meets cuts Google and Amazon traded last week. There’s method in this madness — lots of businesses have yet to test the cloud, and cheap storage is a way to attract those newbies. And once they’re hooked, watch out! Read more »
Guess what Mr. CIO? One in five of your employees uses Dropbox at work
Given Dropbox’s huge popularity — it claims 100 million users — it’s not surprising that many workers use it at the office. But that trend is worrisome to IT departments concerned with security breaches. Read more »
This week in cloud: All Amazon all the time but Google gets its licks in
It was a frenetic week for cloud with Google touching off a storage price war on Monday. Amazon responded Wednesday and Google hit back on Thursday. Amazon Web Services announced a data warehouse and data pipeline service at its inaugural AWS: Reinvent show. Read more »
Ok, this is getting silly: Google cuts storage prices — again
Just when you thought the cloud storage wars couldn’t get any hotter, they do. Google on Thursday launched its second price cut in a week, a day after Amazon Web Services lopped S3 prices by 25 percent. Microsoft are you out there? Read more »
This week in cloud: Why we love/hate cloud storage; Dell’s rough week
photo: Fixya
Two things are true: Consumers love cloud-based file share and storage systems and consumers have concerns about cloud-based file share and storage systems. Dell makes another acquisition in hopes of bolstering its cloud storage after a rough earnings call. Read more »
Would-be Box killers queue up new file share features and functions
Accellion, InfraScale offer new services to take on Box, the would-be-Dropbox of the enterprise. When it comes to cloud storage, file share and sync, we’re still in the “land grab” stage with companies jockeying for business customers more than profit. Read more »
Box gets more international with Equinix deal
Box will use six Equinix IBX data centers worldwide to serve the business users of its file-sharing and storage solution. Up till now, Box had no data center capacity outside the US although more than half of its customers were international. Read more »
Nasuni scores $20M to build out storage sales effort
photo: Nasuni
Nasuni, which helps distributed companies manage their cloud storage securely, has $20 million in a new funding round — led by a mystery investor — to help it pay for new features and expand sales and marketing, said CEO Andres Rodriguez. Read more »
Rackspace breaks out block storage with disk and SSD options
photo: Flickr / getinet
Rackspace’s new OpenStack-powered Cloud Block Storage comes in spinning disk and faster SSD tiers and lets customers mix and match block size with compute instances as needed, says company CTO John Engates. Read more »
Microsoft snags StorSimple to pack more stuff onto Azure
Microsoft snarfs up StorSimple as an easy way to get customer data into its Windows Azure storage cloud. The deal, terms of which were not disclosed, signals increasing competition between Microsoft, Google, Amazon and the OpenStack crew for customer data. Read more »
Cloud storage wars rage on with OwnCloud’s new release
OwnCloud released its community edition and updated the business version of its service which lets IT store employee files in its cloud of choice. Cloud storage for business is a white hot market at least in terms of vendor activity. Read more »
Funambol gets $5.75M to fuel mobile carriers’ cloud services
photo: Flickr / getinet
Funambol’s first round of funding in four years comes just as mobile operators are mounting a challenge against the cloud storage services offered by Google, Microsoft and Apple. Funambol provides a white-label cross-platform service, which several of the big carriers have already tapped. Read more »
Box seeks new allies in cloud storage wars with integration framework
photo: Pinar Ozger
NetSuite, DocuSign, Jive, SugarCRM, Concur and Oracle sign on early to new Box Embed program but with erstwhile Box partners like Salesforce.com and other vendors now doing their own cloud file-share-and-sync, Box does need some reinforcements. Read more »
How to add 5.5 petabytes and get banned from Costco during a hard drive crisis
photo: Backblaze
When last year’s hard drive shortage threatened Backblaze’s all-you-can-store cloud backup service, the company had to get creative to keep up its 50TB-a-day hard drive habit. The solution: external hard drives from retail stores and an army of volunteers making sure they kept coming. Read more »
Is there room for another cloud storage company? CloudMe says ‘yes.’
photo: Flickr / getinet
Can a small company compete with Dropbox and Box in the wild-and-wooly world of cloud storage and file sharing? Mathias Ericsson, CEO of CloudMe, thinks so, provided the company is creative and ahead of the curve. Read more »
Box beefs up security and search for enterprise storage
With more software vendors fielding their own cloud storage capabilities, Box continues to beef up enterprise security and perks for its offering. New features include two-step authentication, company-wide search for admins, and content scanning, the company said. Read more »
Free storage takes a (small) hit in Google’s latest house-cleaning
The more-wood-behind-fewer-arrows Google has announced its latest round of retired products, among them Insights for Search, which has been merged into Google Trends, and Google News Badges. Additionally, storage accounts will be consolidated across Picasa and Drive, giving users one pool of capacity. Read more »
