cloud

The cloud storage and collaboration space is more competitive than ever before. Google recently rolled out its new cloud-based document and storage solution and faces competition not just from cloud companies such as Box and Dropbox, but from Apple, Microsoft and Amazon as well. Here’s a brief comparison of the big players:

Amazon Cloud Drive: 

• Storage: 5GB free (purchases from the Amazon MP3 Store don’t count towards storage limit)
• Mobile Integration: Cloud Player for Android, no official iOS app
• Desktop Integration: Amazon MP3 Uploader/Downloader for music
• Pricing: $1 a gigabyte per year
• Collaborative Editing: No
• File Size Limitations: 2GB

iCloud:

• Storage: 5GB free, 20GB is $40 a year, 50GB is $100 a year
• Mobile Integration: Built into iOS 5
• Desktop Integration: Mac OS X 10.7.x and Windows 7
• Pricing: $40/$100 a year
• Collaborative Editing: No
• File Size Limitations: No

Box:

• Storage: 5GB free, up to 50GB for personal accounts, 1TB for business and unlimited for eneterprise
• Mobile Integration: iOS, Android, and BlackBerry
• Desktop Integration: Mac, Windows, web
• Pricing: Personal accounts start at $9.99 a month for 25GB, business plans start at $15 a month (at least 3 users required)
• Collaborative Editing: Yes, more robust editing for business accounts
• File Size Limitations: 25MB – 100MB for free accounts, up to 2GB for business accounts, up to 2GB for business accounts

Dropbox:

• Storage: 2GB free and 500MB per referral, paid plans up to 100GB
• Mobile Integration: Android, iOS, BlackBerry
• Desktop Integration: Windows, Mac, Linux, web
• Pricing: $100 a year for 50GB, $200 a year for 100GB
• Collaborative Editing: No, but many cloud document services integrate with Dropbox
• File Size Limitations: None for desktop, 300MB for web uploads

Microsoft SkyDrive:

• Storage: 7GB free (25GB for users who signed up before April 22, 2012), Up to 100GB
• Mobile Integration: Official apps for Windows Phone 7 and iOS, unofficial Android apps, mobile web access
• Desktop Integration: Windows, Mac and web
• Pricing: Additional storage available for $0.50 a gigabyte, 100GB of additional storage is $50 a year.
• Collaborative Editing: Yes, with Office Live Web Apps
• File Size Limitations: 2GB (300 megabytes for web uploads)

Google Drive:

• Storage: 5GB free, up to 16TB
• Mobile Integration: Android, iOS (coming soon)
• Desktop Integration: Windows, Mac, web
• Pricing: $30 a year for 25GB, $60 a year for $100GB
• Collaborative Editing: Yes with Google Docs
• File Size Limitations: 10GB

“Enterprise software player SAP has unveiled aggressive plans to grow its presence in the database software and mobile apps markets…” read the full post on siliconrepublic.

A great majority of the worldwide companies has identified the cloud as an effective medium to reduce their costs. However, after the implementation, disillusionment often follows.

Cloud computing is fundamentally changing the IT and the delivery methods of IT-services. The first step into the cloud is the virtualisation – the technical base. A recent study showed that virtualisation projects are already realised extensively and that expected goals like more efficiency and a better scalability can mostly be reached. The survey by Symantec among 3,700 companies worldwide also proved that a lot of cloud projects end up with results far away from the expectations.

Figure: Half of the targets at cloud projects are not reached.

Companies have the most of experience with server virtualisation – the technology is used by 45 percent. Additionally, 75 percent of the companies think about deploying private and hybrid clouds.

By taking a look at the expectations and the actual results of virtualisation- and cloud-implementations, you can see that there are some large differences between them: projects with server-virtualisation were the most successful, with a averaged lack of four percent between goal and result. The respondents had hoped for a higher scalability and lower running and investigation costs from the virtualisation technology. With similarly high expectations, cloud projects disappointed throughout: on an average, half of the expectations were not reached. The difference at the initialisation of extra resources is striking, too. While 76 percent of the respondents hoped for an easement of their workload by cloud technologies, better services could only be reached by 37 percent.

Now it´s your turn: What do you think would be the reasons for these circumstances? We are looking forward to a lot of comments.

Found at: http://www.computerworld.ch/news/it-branche/artikel/cloud-projekte-verfehlen-ziele-56965/

The Cloud :: Developer Convention is the chance for any developer to get in touch with the best developers across europe. They should attend, network and become a part of the great community and take their chance to create an awesome application within a team during the Cloud Hackathon!

Developers, programmers and designers from all over Europe are invited to come to the design hotel EAST Hamburg for a two day convention on 13./14. of October 2011 to hack awesome applications and services on top of the worlds leading and most popular cloud computing infrastructures. During the whole event mentors from the worlds leading cloud infrastructure providers support them to implement their ideas.

At the end of the Cloud Hackathon, the results will be presented in front of the audience and the jury of leading developers and software architects from around the world. Attend and enjoy two days of meeting new people, learn new stuff and build apps and services on top of worlds leading cloud computing infrastructures with other talented developers from across Europe. They can win a prize from a pool of gifts sponsored by the cloud infrastructure providers. And of course party, party, party in the Upper East of the EAST Hotel Hamburg.

Of course anybody is a winner. They will become a part of a great community, meet new people, learn new stuff and much more.

But three categories will be awarded:
- The most creative application!
- The most cloudable application!
- The most portable application!

Each cloud provider who is a partner of the Cloud :: Developer Convention ’11 commits to sponsor the prices.

More information and the charded registration are at http://cloud-devcon.com

So we have already started into the new year and haven’t been talking about IT trends? Good that others have been quick and precise: By the end of last year CIO published their list on the hottest topics in the IT world in the year 2011. Here is an overview of what is believed to change the IT sector in the year that has already started:

1. Tablets
These devices will not only be used for business but even more in the private. The market for tablets will flourish this year, while the iPad will stay market leader.

2. Oracle will buy salesforce.com
Software vendor salesforce.com and its small and medium sized business customers will finally be bought by Oracle. This will open the field in small and medium sized businesses for Oracle and in turn salesforces CRM software will find its way to larger businesses.

3. IBM or HP will buy SAP
Being independent is getting more difficult…and it would would fit IBMs as well as HPs strategy to be building highly integrated systems.

4. Flash memory
The use of flash memory in enterprises will boom. Flash memory will become less expensive and the demand for data centers will grow over the next years.

5. Wikileaks
Wikileaks won’t be stopped and will go on in 2011.

6. Cyberwarfare
According to CIO Cyberwarefare will become reality. Cyber espionage and online sabotage will play an increasing role in warfare.

7. Clouds
More and more business applications will be moved to the cloud. Especially start-ups will play an important role in the process of migrating data to the cloud. The topic of connectivity will also be driven by the cloud.

8. Social media
Social Media will reach a maturation stage in 2011, which leads to a different use: not only non-profit organizations will use social media channels to spread their word, also profit enterprises will find their way to make use of social media. The challenge of misused data will remain.

9. U.S. congress takes tech break
There will be no important tech-related legislation passed this year by the U.S. congress.

10. Steve Ballmer believed to leave Microsoft
The CIOs prediction concerning CEOs is that Microsofts Steve Ballmer won’t stay CEO.

What are your predicitions for this year? Anything to add or any points here you wouldn’t share? We are looking forward to your opinions on this.