Dropbox, Google Drive, Apple iCloud, Microsoft SkyDrive; maybe they’re not apples after all?
Cloud storage product Dropbox is one of those tools that users tend to rave about. It’s deceptively simple. It’s pretty reliable. The value proposition is immediately apparent. It has paid tiers of usage that bring additional storage but (like other freemium beacons such as Evernote) the free offering is rich enough to be compelling, engaging,...
Data Markets, revisited
Earlier this year, I conducted a series of podcasts with some of the leading lights in the Data Market business. We delved into the things that differentiated them from one another, and we searched for the areas of commonality that might provide some boundaries to the rather fluid concept of a market for a non-rival...
Data Market Chat: Piyush Lumba discusses Microsoft’s Windows Azure Marketplace
As CEO Steve Ballmer has noted more than once, Microsoft’s future plans see the company going “all in” with the cloud. The company’s cloud play, Azure, offers the capabilities that we might expect from a cloud, and includes infrastructure such as virtual machines and storage as well as the capability to host and run software...
Nurturing the market for Data Markets
From Microsoft’s Azure Data Marketplace to the eponymous DataMarket, or InfoChimps, Factual, and Kasabi, there’s resurgent interest in the venerable business of collecting, curating, and commercialising data created by others. But despite investment and innovation, there isn’t yet the matching evidence for much use or — even — interest amongst prospective customers. In principle, at least, these data markets...
Microsoft, the USA PATRIOT Act, and European cloud computing
Microsoft announced last month that its Software as a Service (SaaS) offering, Office 365, will better comply with European guidelines to ensure that customer data is adequately protected. This move is certainly welcome, but the long-armed spectre of the USA PATRIOT Act continues to hang over Microsoft and other US companies, regardless of customers’ nationality...
Talking about Microsoft BPOS with Scott Rodgers and Bob Fahey of Avanade
In my latest podcast I talk with Scott Rodgers and Bob Fahey of multinational IT Consultancy firm, Avanade. Formed as a partnership between Microsoft and Accenture, Avanade focuses upon delivering IT solutions based upon Microsoft’s suite of technologies and products, including Cloud offerings such as Azure and the company’s Business Productivity Online Standard Suite (BPOS)....
International Cloud Computing piece for GigaOM Pro
I have been a fan of (and subscriber to) GigaOM‘s analyst site, GigaOM Pro, for some time. As the site’s blurb describes, “All too often, insider analyst research and commentary is costly, inaccessible or ineffective to the entrepreneurs, investors and innovators who need timely insights most. We’re changing this by making high-quality expert reports, data...
Forrester reckons Private Clouds are OK
Image via CrunchBase It might seem that the mega-bucks reports from the likes of Gartner, Forrester et al are the preserve of CxOs with vast desks upon which they can array the multitudinous documents to which their employers’ subscription entitles them. The truth, though, is that these documents — which notionally sell for hundreds or thousands...
Talking with Reuven Cohen about the Open Cloud Manifesto
Image via CrunchBase Everyone who wants to do so should have had their chance to read the Open Cloud Manifesto by now, and to see the list of companies putting their names to it. As expected, Microsoft, Google and Amazon are not there. Reuven Cohen of Enomaly is one of those involved in bringing the...
Talking about Microsoft’s Windows Azure with Amitabh Srivastava
Image by DBegley via Flickr Long known for their dominance on the desktop, Microsoft is now making a concerted effort to carve out a space of its own in the Cloud with Windows Azure. Amitabh Srivastava, the company’s Corporate Vice President with responsibility for Azure, spoke with me this week and the result has just...
Before the Open Cloud Manifesto; a quite remarkable furore over a document few have seen
Image via Wikipedia Open, Interoperable services in the Cloud. Sounds like a no-brainer, eh? Well over the past 24 hours or so, a plethora of blogs, mailing lists and social networks have been getting extremely agitated over some nascent efforts intended to support exactly that. And, what’s more, the vast majority of those getting most...
Sage preparing SaaS offering for 2009… just in the UK?
Ahead of announcing their half-year results this week, it appears that the biggest software company in the UK is finally preparing to go up against SaaS offerings from MYOB, Intuit, Microsoft and others. Sage is a titan of the UK software scene but has struggled recently, both with expansion beyond Europe and (like others) with...
