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Dropbox to host first-ever developers conference this summer

Barb Darrow — Mon, 06 May 2013 19:00:20 +0000

Dropbox, the file-sync-store-and-share provider to the masses, will host its inaugural developers conference this summer. The event — called DBX — will take place July 9 at San Francisco’s Fort Mason.

Details other than that are sparse but in a blog post the company said it hopes to draw developers and partners wanting to learn about the “Dropbox Platform” and to meet the engineering and design team behind the Dropbox APIs.

Dropbox now modestly claims “more than 100 million users” and has caused considerable angst among IT heavyweights including Microsoft and IBM, but not necessarily for the same reasons. Microsoft launched SkyDrive — which as of Monday claims 250 million users – in part to catch some of that Dropbox lightning in a bottle.

IBM forbid the use of Dropbox by its employees, citing security concerns. In fact, many IT staffs across the board view Dropbox and other consumer-grade storage services with anxiety. Their worst nightmare is that employees will send and store sensitive corporate data to this public service. Dropbox has become the epitome of shadow IT.

Those concerns sparked an explosion of startups angling to be the “Dropbox of the Enterprise.

Dropbox has been making moves to make its business version more IT friendly. But the vast bulk of the company’s hundred million users are no doubt on the consumer service.

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Dropbox adds single sign-on support to woo more business users

Barb Darrow — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 16:00:28 +0000

Business workers hate, hate, hate having to sign onto multiple services — cloud-based or on premises — with different passwords and credentials. That’s why Dropbox is bolstering its business version with single sign-on or SSO capabilities. First, it’s supporting the Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) which means if your IT people have set up a SAML federated process in the office, you can sign on once to access all those affiliated applications.

It’s working with identity management experts — Ping Identity, Okta, OneLogin, Centrify and Symplified — to bring SSO to those users. And, in case it’s not clear that Dropbox wants to attract business users, it’s re-christening Dropbox Teams as Dropbox for Business. Got it? Good.

IT admins can already integrate Dropbox with Microsoft Active Directory, the directory services scheme used by many companies, to automate the creation and removal of Dropbox for Teams accounts from an existing directory. But until now (well, actually until next month, when it comes online) it did not support SSO.

Dropbox is the undisputed king of consumer-focused file-share-and-sync — as of November it claimed more than 100 million users. It is far from clear, however, how many of those users graduate from the free to the paid consumer service. Nor does the company provide numbers of Dropbox for Teams, er, for Business users, which costs $795 per year for 5 users plus $125 for every additional user. But it does say that Dropbox is used in 95 percent of all Fortune 500 companies.

As we all know by now, people sho use a given service at home like to use it at work, which means that the 95 percent figure is credible. We also hear about Fortune 500 companies — including IBM – prohibiting the use of such consumer-focused products (including Dropbox specifically), and that’s the trend that Dropbox is trying to nip in the bud here.

Earlier this year, Dropbox added a more IT-friendly console that lets admins restrict access and transfer of company documents and helps them track user activity.

Sujay Jaswa, VP of business development for Dropbox, said the company does not see Dropbox competing with SkyDrive — which Microsoft has tied tightly into Office and Windows — nor with Box, which would love to be the Dropbox of the Enterprise. “We just want to build the kinds of features people love,” he said.

But anyone outside of Dropbox would say that it is definitely contending with Microsoft, Box and the Google Apps-and-Drive tandem in business accounts.

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Cloud storage security service BoxCryptor previews business-friendly new version

David Meyer — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 15:31:52 +0000

BoxCryptor, the German startup that provides added security for information held in cloud storage vaults such as Dropbox, SkyDrive and Google Drive, is previewing a new version of its client-side encryption tool.

The new version of BoxCryptor is more explicitly aimed at teams. It includes new features such as the ability to share file access permissions without sharing private passwords, and to share files with entire teams with a single click. BoxCryptor 2 also does away with the original version’s mapping of files to folders, a system that meant every folder and project required the setting-up of a new BoxCryptor drive – now, there’s just one drive.

Another compliance-friendly new feature for businesses is the option to have a master key covering everything encrypted by employees, just in case someone leaves suddenly or goes rogue.

The update comes as BoxCryptor finds itself up against an increasing range of rivals such as Viivo and DigitalQuick. CipherCloud closed a $30 million investment round last December, and Symantec is also now in the Dropbox encryption game. In short, everyone’s clicked that consumer cloud services will be used in business, like it or not, and their consumer-grade security leaves a market opportunity for more serious users.

According to BoxCryptor CEO Andrea Wittek, the full version of BoxCryptor 2 will come out sometime this quarter. The technical preview, launched on Tuesday, can be downloaded for Windows and Android.

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When iCloud isn’t enough: balancing other cloud storage options

Mark Crump — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 20:00:07 +0000

Rene Ritchie’s excellent article on iCloud and Dropbox has forced me to examine how I use iCloud and other cloud storage. When iCloud launched in 2011, I had hopes it would be a single-source solution, but over the years it’s become apparent to me that for my uses, no single cloud-based storage fulfills all my needs. Instead, I rely on a few different solutions based on the strengths of each platform.

Here’s what I use for storing documents related to my freelance business, as well as the voluminous amount of research data for my hobbies.

iCloud

iCloud’s biggest limitation is the app sandboxing model. By that, I mean, a document stored in Pages can only be accessed in the Pages app on iOS and OS X. While I can “Open in” another app on iOS, that creates a separate copy; changes made to that copy aren’t reflected back in the Pages’s version.

I’ve made my peace with this.

The bulk of my freelance and personal writing is done in Pages ($19.99) and Numbers ($19.99). I have found these two apps sync the best, with the fewest formatting issues. Oddly, I have an Excel document with graphics that opens fine in Numbers for iOS, but QuickOffice and OfficeHD do not display it properly on my iPad. My day job files need to stay on my company-supplied laptop, so I’m not as worried about keeping those files in sync.

I’ve also made a decision to focus on Pages/iCloud for my writing because I don’t have to worry too much about a third-party developer either ceasing support, or worse, having the app pulled from the App Store. For writing apps, it’s unlikely they’ll get pulled, but it’s better to be safe than sorry. I figure if Apple were to drop iCloud/Pages, I’d likely have bigger problems. That said, I do routinely back up my Mobile Documents folder so I can access them if something bad happens to iCloud.

Most importantly, other than some initial growing pains when iCloud was launched, I haven’t had any memorable issues in the last year or so. I open the iWork app and it automatically downloads new or updated files. I have yet to see that completely seamless action with other third-party storage options.

Dropbox

My Dropbox usage can be be simply summed up with this: any document that the sandbox model flatly doesn’t work with, goes into Dropbox. I’m also a musician, so I have several gigs worth worth of sheet music, scanned music magazines (that I’ve scanned myself) and other reference files. These documents need to be read on either my iPhone, iPad, Mac, PC or Android device. Obviously for my cross-platform needs, Apple’s sandboxing won’t work.

I also have crucial folders from my Documents folder moved to my Dropbox folder. This way, I can access them remotely as well as have another backup if they are deleted (I use CrashPlan for my online backup). Dropbox’s ability to restore files has come in quite handy.

So, what would it take for me to forgo iCloud and just use Dropbox?

Better Office-type apps, for the most part. For my uses, Pages remains the best word processor on iOS. I’ve had just enough “hmm, that didn’t work the way I thought it would” moments with QuickOffice and OfficeHD. Sometimes it didn’t refresh the Dropbox folder fully, or the document open with the formatting a mess. While these overall percentage this occurs is small, I don’t want to risk it.

What the future could hold

The biggest change that could happen to my workflow is if Microsoft ever releases Office for iOS. This will likely result in yet another cloud service (Microsoft’s Skydrive), I’m OK with this. SkyDrive works similar to Dropbox where I can get file level access if I need to.

What I expect to remain unchanged is that a single-source of cloud storage will likely never be possible for my uses.

I can live with that.

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Salesforce re-does Do with Dropbox, Google integrations

Barb Darrow — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 18:14:28 +0000

The thing about collaboration is that you can’t do it alone. That’s the rationale behind Do More, an enhanced version of Salesforce.com’s Do task and project management software that was designed to make it easy for small business staffs to work together and with partners and customers using popular tools. Do More claims easy integration with Dropbox, Google Drive, Harvest, Contactually and Wufoo.

Most small workgroups already have favorite consumer-oriented tools they use every day (hello Dropbox!), so it makes a lot of sense to make it drop-dead easy for them to keep using those tools instead of trying to lure them away.

Do morphs into Do More

The original Do app, viewed as a way for individuals to manage tasks, has evolved into a project tracking and management tool for workgroups. These new links to other collaboration products are a further push in that direction.

Do co-founder Amit Kulkarni claims more than 100,000 small companies use “Do” as their collaboration home base and hopes to capitalize on that.

“As they use this tool, they also use Dropbox or Google Drive [for file sharing], Harvest for time tracking and Wufoo forms for leads — we thought it would be cool if you’re using Do as your persistent browser tag for you to be able to see all that information from the other applications inside of Do,” Kulkarni said in an interview.

Do More makes it easy to attach a Dropbox file to a project, comment on that file and then, if necessary, share screenshots just by clicking on the Dropbox icon, Kulkarni said.

With Do More, users can now:

talk to customers and prospects using Wufoo online forms
use Contactually to create and manage email contact lists
share pertinent files with Dropbox or Google Drive.
use Do Chat for instant messaging and collaboration.
automate time tracking with Harvest
use Salesforce.com’s Desk.com for customer service

Collaboration battle gets intense

Do, and now Do More, come out of Salesforce.com’s acquisition of Manymoon and its social productivity application — then at the top of the Google Apps Marketplace charts — two years ago.

Easy collaboration continues to be a big selling point for vendors old and new — with IBM pushing Connections; Google touting Google Apps and Google Drive; and of course Microsoft beating the drum for Office plus Skydrive plus SharePoint. Consumer fan favorite Dropbox is adding more IT-friendly controls to attract more business customers. Younger, potentially more nimble startups like Asana are also in the mix, so the competition here will be fierce.

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Dropbox gets more IT friendly with better controls

Barb Darrow — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 19:00:24 +0000

The tech landscape is chock full of companies positioning themselves as the Dropbox of the Enterprise. That’s because Dropbox has done a great job making itself the file share-and-sync product for consumers. But Dropbox itself isn’t ignoring the business market — at least in small companies and divisions of bigger organizations.

On Tuesday, the company’s beefing up Dropbox for Teams with a more powerful console for both users and IT admins that will keep company documents in the company — if that is the mandate — and allow admins to better track user activity.

The new console lets admins:

View member details like per-user storage usage, recent activity, web sessions, linked devices and third-party applications.
View team activity — member log-ins and team invitations and generate downloadable reports
Set sharing controls to keep shared folders and links within the company or allow team members to decide access level on a case-by-case basis

The power of Dropbox is that millions of consumers use it from their tablets and smartphones, and want to keep using it at work. Its flaw is that IT views it as a problem — large companies, including IBM, forbid its use (along with the use of other consumer IT that it deems insecure.)

“Over 2 million businesses have people inside them using Dropbox. It’s already pervasive, we just want to make it easier for IT to say yes to those people asking for Dropbox,” Sujay Jaswa, VP of business development for Dropbox said in an interview.

Business users are an important target for San Francisco-based Dropbox. While it claims 100 million users total, it does not say how many consumers pay for the service nor how many use Dropbox for Teams, which costs $795 per year for 5 users plus $125 for each additional user.

Dropbox is the most entrenched of these competitors and it’s doing some good things here to make itself more palatable to IT at least in smaller companies, said Terri McClure, senior analyst for Enterprise Strategy Group.

While Dropbox is the champ of consumer cloud storage, it faces off in that market against Apple iCloud, Microsoft SkyDrive and Google Drive.

Among business accounts, Google is getting traction with the Google Apps-Google Drive combo and Microsoft integrates SkyDrive storage with Office and Windows 8. Box, usually the company most associated with the Dropbox-of-the-Enterprise crowd, touts its support of all client devices, but targets larger companies than Dropbox for Teams, said McClure.

Still, it’s hard not to see all these rivals battling it out for the same paying business customers down the road.

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Microsoft makes SkyDrive more collaboration-friendly

Barb Darrow — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 14:56:01 +0000

Microsoft wants to make it easier for workgroups to collaborate using its SkyDrive cloud-based storage service. Starting now, users with an invite link to a shared document can work on that document without providing a Microsoft account number.

That should grease the skids for folks who find logging into yet another online account annoying and enable invited workgroup members to edit a document simultaneously if necessary.

According the SkyDrive blog:

“One piece of feedback we’ve consistently heard, especially from students, is that our current SkyDrive edit links can be frustrating for recipients when they find that they need to sign in or sign up for a Microsoft account just to make a quick edit to the document.”

Microsoft is putting a lot of weight behind Skydrive, integrating it with Windows 8 and Office (and Office 365.) Skydrive competes directly — and ferociously — with Google Drive — which also allows its users to edit documents without logging in. Both of these entries also have to face off against Dropbox, the hugely popular consumer-based file storage and share service, as well as Box and dozens of other smaller players.

Group leaders wanting to keep tighter control over who can collaborate can invite people into the document via email and check a “require the user to sign-in” box.

In a market this competitive, lowering barriers to entry is really important. Let’s face it, signing up for yet another online account can be a pain and many folks will just skip it if they can. So, this is a smart move for Microsoft. Oh, Microsoft also said that Skydrive is now home to 1 billion Office documents.

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Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL: grading their iOS apps for 2012

Geoffrey Goetz — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 18:16:47 +0000

Using the development of apps in Apple’s App Store as a gauge, you can start to see a given company’s mobile agenda when it comes to how a they believe their customers are using Apple’s iPhone. When the iPhone was first introduced as a “breakthrough internet communicator” at MacWorld back in 2007, few truly understood that how people access and use the internet was about to change. Five years later, by looking at four of the dominant leaders in web-based search, mail and chat from the past decade — Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL — you can clearly see the strengths each have used to transition themselves from web to mobile by how they’ve developed apps in their rival’s App Store. Some of them are in transition (Yahoo) or have their own mobile platforms (Microsoft, Google) but all of them have found comfortable homes on the iOS platform.

I gathered data from online app services like AppShopper.com, 148Apps.biz and Apple’s own Search API in order to gain some insight as to what each company has accomplished in 2012. Each app listed under the company’s name was counted, along with the latest release date, category, number of updates made in 2012, whether or not the app was introduced as a new in 2012, as well as their peak ranking within each app’s respective category. Here is what I found:

Google – With more than 26 apps in the App Store today, 12 of which have held top 10 most-downloaded spots in the last 30 days, you can begin to see that Google is not solely dependent on Android when it comes to mobile platforms. Google introduced nine new iOS apps in 2012 like YouTube, Maps, Chrome and Drive, many of which were immediately well-received by Apple’s customers.

Setting the bar for mobile development on Apple’s iOS platform, Google entered into 2012 with an already-strong portfolio of apps in the App Store. When Apple forced Google’s hand in 2012 by excluding YouTube and Maps from the iOS 6 release, Google responded in kind by delivering two great apps in their place. The only thing really missing from its lineup is a native music app that can access Google’s online music service.

Yahoo! – Early in 2012, Yahoo! announced that it was pulling several seldom-used app from the App Store. This move however did not mark the end of Yahoo on the App Store. By introducing eight news apps in 2012, its total number of apps is currently at 15. Managing 66 releases, Yahoo has been able to adapt as it currently has 10 apps that have held top 100 positions in the respective categories in the last 30 days.

An area where Yahoo thrives that Google does not is sports content. By focusing a lot of attention on their successful series of Fantasy sports titles, Yahoo has had quite a year re-defining itself on Apple’s mobile platform. With its major services like Mail, Messenger and Search well represented as native apps, the introduction of its own branded browser in 2012, and a well received Flickr for iOS redesign, Yahoo is proving to be a much better organized mobile development shop. While the rest of Yahoo may be in a state of chaos, its iOS team appears to have gained a clearer vision of what mobile means to Yahoo in 2012.

Microsoft – Leading the pack with the most new iOS apps of these four companies, Microsoft added an additional 13 apps to the App Store in 2012, bringing its total to 29. But it hasn’t seen the same broadly popular reception as its rivals: While almost half of its apps have held top 100 positions in their respective categories in the last 30 days, not one of them has been in in the top 10. Microsoft needs to step up its game a bit to add new features to its iOS app lineup if it is looking to break into the top 10 with a must-have app.

Despite the introduction of its Windows Phone 8 introduced in 2012, Microsoft clearly has not abandoned Apple’s mobile platform for its own. Microsoft is choosing cater to its Xbox audience in particular on Apple’s platform — it has the highest number of gaming apps for iOS out of the four. With Office for iOS just around the corner in 2013, there’s hope for Microsoft to have a megahit — outside of its Xbox franchise – on iOS very soon.

AOL – If you just look at the number of app upgrades and releases AOL has managed in 2012 (98!), you would think that it has one of the hardest-working iOS development shops around. Despite that, this year the theme was simplification: the company managed to clean house by removing several of the 49 apps it had introduced since the first day the App Store was open. Holding on to just 28 apps overall, AOL has seen nine apps achieve top 100 status. Two of which, MapQuest and TechCrunch, have held the No. 1 and No. 2 positions in their respective categories in the last month.

One thing you should notice about AOL’s app lineup is the inclusion of dedicated news apps for services like Engaget, TechCrunch and TUAW. With good amount of news, weather and information services in there lineup, AOL appears to be focusing on what it’s good at: content delivery more than its core search, mail and chat services. AOL also has a decent music presence with SHOUTcast, PLAY and its own AOL Radio apps.

Most app activity in 2012

Overall, it is clear that each company has aggressively embraced and developed apps for Apple’s mobile platform that they feel are important to their customers. While Google may have set the iOS app development bar in 2011 by already having a strong presence in the top 10 for so many of the apps they have developed, it does not appear as if the other three followed Google’s example. While Google opted to double down on iOS development by continuing its focus on creating a native version of its online services, the other three looked to promote their content. Microsoft is catering to gaming customers, Yahoo has focused more on sports, and AOL is leading the way with news, entertainment and lifestyle information. While Yahoo has definitely made great strides in turning its mobile agenda around in 2012, it is Microsoft with its 13 new apps and AOL with its 98 releases and updates that were the most aggressive in 2012. Each of the four have cemented a solid foundation with a much clearer vision in 2012 for what they intend to accomplish in the year to come.

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Microsoft brings your photos to Xbox 360 via new SkyDrive app

Barb Darrow — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 14:19:15 +0000

Microsoft is serious about wanting you — well everyone really — to put more of our stuff into SkyDrive, the company’s consumer-oriented storage cloud. On Tuesday, it launched a new app that lets you view your SkyDrive-based photos and video on the big-screen Xbox 360 console.

If you have a Windows Phone, the cleverly namedSkyDrive App for Xbox 360, lets you take photos and view them “almost immediately” on the big screen — provided you use one account sign-in for both Xbox Live and phone –according to Microsoft’s Inside SkyDrive blog.

Also, according to the blog:

” … the SkyDrive app for Xbox supports Kinect voice controls and gestures as well as remote and controller input. Yes, this means you can view a slide show of your SkyDrive photos just by talking to your Xbox… which is very, very cool. (Kinect voice controls are not available in all languages.)”

As GigaOM has reported — storage is ground zero in the fight by industry giants to win new users and keep existing customers both on the consumer front — with Apple iCloud, Dropbox, SkyDrive and Google Drive — as well as in business accounts. In that arena Amazon Web Services, Google and Microsoft Azure have traded four price cuts in the last few weeks.

The new SkyDrive-Xbox connection could be a big deal for Microsoft which says SkyDrive — with its Windows 8 integration — has doubled usage over the past six months. Xbox-Kinect is one of Microsoft’s few undisputed hits in the consumer realm and it’s smart for the company to capitalize on that popularity.

For more check out the Microsoft video below:

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Microsoft SkyDrive gets new Android app, facelift

Barb Darrow — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 19:16:24 +0000

Making good on promises to make its SkyDrive cloud storage service ecumenical across clients, Microsoft has added a new Android app. It also updated user interface to mimic the “tiled” look of the upcoming Windows 8 operating system. The company announced the SkyDrive facelift, which will take place over the next 24 hours, on its Windows Team blog.

Here’s how Chris Jones, VP of Microsoft’s Windows Live Group listed the new features:

Skydrive.com — Modern design for desktop and tablet browsers with instant search, contextual toolbar, thumbnail multi-select, drag-and-drop organization, and HTML5 sorting
SkyDrive for Windows desktop & OS X — Faster uploads for people around the world and tons of bug and performance improvements under the hood
SkyDrive for Android — A new app that lets you access, upload and share from Android phones
SkyDrive for developers –- Apps built using our SkyDrive API can now store or access any type of file in a person’s SkyDrive, plus there’s a new, easy-to-use file picker API for websites (similar to our file picker for Windows 8 apps)

Microsoft is pitching SkyDrive as a cloud for all devices to compete with iCloud and Google Drive. It released Windows Phone and iPhone apps last December. Apple’s iCloud doesn’t support non-iOS mobile devices, although some iCloud objects can be accessed from any device.

All of these tech powers hope they can lure users outside their current installed base with free or near-free cloud-based storage services, and then, perhaps hook them on other services or products.

As we’ve reported before, Microsoft is supporting non-Windows devices and clients with many of its cloud services, including its Azure platform-as-a-service. At the same time the company is yoking SkyDrive tightly to Office, Yammer, Skype and other products on its roster.

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