A recent news items told us that Cloud storage may be great, but it is also disruptive. However, as disruptive as it may be, people now want Cloud storage, which means that providers continuously come up with new ideas for storage. One of these developers, for instance, is Wikibon.
Wikibon’s Dave Vellante raised an interesting issue – that of the cloud being quite disruptive for traditional storage. Chris Archinaco agreed that it was totally disruptive. “But it’s a lot less disruptive for our architecture than for other providers,” he added.
Wikibon is one of many new developers of this type of storage, which they are offering to attract a greater amount of customers.
Clone or Build Your Own?
Because there are already so many different Cloud options out there, a large number of new providers simply clone existing processes. DropBox, for instance, is the most cloned online storage provider on the market today. However, there are also some who think that coming up with a different type of storage is even better, and that this will bring you to the forefront of the market. One of these is Oracle, a world renowned software company.
Oracle seems to think a better idea is to build your own domestic cloud storage rig and has therefore published a recipe for doing so. Naturally the recipe includes lots of Oracle products. [...] The latter makes it possible to connect iPhones and Android devices to the server, which gives oracle the ammunition it needs to offer the recipe as a home-brewed DropBox alternative.
One company who believes that it is a better idea to use an existing idea, however, is Verizon. They understand the success of the likes of DropBox and build on this tried and tested method, rather than developing something new that has more potential to fail. However, cloning something does mean that you have to come up with something that makes it a little bit different, which is exactly what Verizon has done by offering it up to the Android market.
Described as a secure storage app, Verizon Cloud backs up photos, videos, music, documents, text messages, and other files from a user’s phone in the cloud. Once data is backed up, it is accessible from any compatible smartphone, tablet, desktop, laptop, or on the web.
Last but not least, there are those who don’t create their own ideas, nor do they clone an existing one. They simply work together with an existing provider and brand it as their own (in agreement and participation with the original developers of course). A good example of this is SoftLayer, who are now offering Basho’s cloud storage platform to their customers.
Data center services provider SoftLayer Technologies has partnered with Basho, provider of cloud-storage technology, to offer Basho’s product hosted at SoftLayer data centers on a pay-as-you-go basis. Organizations can design and deploy cloud-storage solutions using SoftLayer’s web-based Solution Designer tool, with ongoing management and provisioning available through the company’s portal, mobile apps and application programming interface (API).
So there are your three options. Which one should you choose? The new, the cloned or the shared? In effect, it really doesn’t matter. What you should look at is what your individual needs are. The best provider for you is the one that is able to meet those needs and do so at the best possible value for money. It doesn’t matter whether that storage provider has been copied, cloned or developed in any way. Each provider has particular pros and cons and your responsibility is to figure out where the pros outweigh the cons for you and you can start by exploring our best cloud storage page.
