Dropbox makes Paper generally available and hits billion-dollar revenue milestone

(c)iStock.com/KIVILCIM PINAR

Cloud storage firm Dropbox has announced two new products focusing on cross-platform storage and collaboration, as well as revealing it has become the fastest software as a service (SaaS) vendor to hit the $1 billion revenue run rate threshold.

According to various reports, Dropbox CEO Drew Houston announced the financial milestone at an event in San Francisco earlier this week. Fastest of course does not mean first; the company has a way to go before it catches up with the likes of Salesforce, who announced its first billion-dollar quarter back in 2013, but Dropbox becomes one of only five companies to achieve the feat.

The new products, as detailed in a company blog post, are Smart Sync – formerly Dropbox Infinite – which aims to provide the industry’s first on-demand, cross-platform cloud storage offering, and the long trailed general availability of Dropbox Paper, a collaborative tool which was launched in open beta as far back as August.

“We’re redesigning Dropbox to be fundamentally designed for teams,” said Houston in a statement. “We’re reinventing sync, bringing a modern collaboration experience to all your files, and launching Paper, a new way to work together that goes beyond the document…and we’re building this all on top of a strong business foundation.”

Dropbox said users in more than 200 countries and territories had created documents in Paper, totalling in the millions, while the product was in beta. Other recently released features in Paper include a presentation mode, improved search functionality, and mobile folder functionality on iOS and Android. With Smart Sync, Dropbox ‘becomes a centrally manageable, secure hub for teams to work together on all their files,’ according to the press materials.

“Team members gain full visibility and unprecedented access to their entire Dropbox right from their desktop file system, no matter how large,” the company added.

According to Business Insider, Dropbox is ‘not in any rush’ to go public; the company continues to be at the forefront of articles of rumoured 2017 IPOs. Dropbox was ranked as the second most influential private company leading cloud computing last year by Forbes, behind Slack and ahead of DocuSign.

Dropbox makes Paper generally available and hits billion-dollar revenue milestone

(c)iStock.com/KIVILCIM PINAR

Cloud storage firm Dropbox has announced two new products focusing on cross-platform storage and collaboration, as well as revealing it has become the fastest software as a service (SaaS) vendor to hit the $1 billion revenue run rate threshold.

According to various reports, Dropbox CEO Drew Houston announced the financial milestone at an event in San Francisco earlier this week. Fastest of course does not mean first; the company has a way to go before it catches up with the likes of Salesforce, who announced its first billion-dollar quarter back in 2013, but Dropbox becomes one of only five companies to achieve the feat.

The new products, as detailed in a company blog post, are Smart Sync – formerly Dropbox Infinite – which aims to provide the industry’s first on-demand, cross-platform cloud storage offering, and the long trailed general availability of Dropbox Paper, a collaborative tool which was launched in open beta as far back as August.

“We’re redesigning Dropbox to be fundamentally designed for teams,” said Houston in a statement. “We’re reinventing sync, bringing a modern collaboration experience to all your files, and launching Paper, a new way to work together that goes beyond the document…and we’re building this all on top of a strong business foundation.”

Dropbox said users in more than 200 countries and territories had created documents in Paper, totalling in the millions, while the product was in beta. Other recently released features in Paper include a presentation mode, improved search functionality, and mobile folder functionality on iOS and Android. With Smart Sync, Dropbox ‘becomes a centrally manageable, secure hub for teams to work together on all their files,’ according to the press materials.

“Team members gain full visibility and unprecedented access to their entire Dropbox right from their desktop file system, no matter how large,” the company added.

According to Business Insider, Dropbox is ‘not in any rush’ to go public; the company continues to be at the forefront of articles of rumoured 2017 IPOs. Dropbox was ranked as the second most influential private company leading cloud computing last year by Forbes, behind Slack and ahead of DocuSign.

Parallels will be at Mac Admin & Developer Conference in London

Parallels to sponsor Mac Admin & Developer Conference (MacADUK 2017) in London this year and we look forward to seeing you at our stand. Our Senior System Engineer, Robert Rengstl will also give a speech on 8th of February: When?  7th – 8th February 2017 Where? The O2 London, United Kingdom – Foyer Speaker Slot? Senior System Engineer Robert Rengstl – Day 2, […]

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How to Use Microsoft Ink in Windows 10 on a Mac

Parallels Desktop 12 Update 1 adds even greater support for Microsoft Ink. (You can read an overview of Ink on the Mac here.) In earlier blog posts, I have focused on the use of Ink in the Office for Windows 2016 applications (Word, Excel, etc.). In this blog post, I will specifically discuss the uses […]

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[session] Is SaaS Dead? By @stackArmor | @CloudExpo #SaaS #Cloud #Serverless

Both SaaS vendors and SaaS buyers are going “all-in” to hyperscale IaaS platforms such as AWS, which is disrupting the SaaS value proposition. Why should the enterprise SaaS consumer pay for the SaaS service if their data is resident in adjacent AWS S3 buckets? If both SaaS sellers and buyers are using the same cloud tools, automation and pay-per-transaction model offered by IaaS platforms, then why not host the “shrink-wrapped” software in the customers’ cloud? Further, serverless computing, cloud marketplaces and DevOps are changing the economics of hosting and delivering software.

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The Path to Your Future | @CloudExpo #AI #ML #Cloud #DigitalTransformation

In 2016, cloud computing started to dominate many IT market segments. As a business, Synergy Research Group reported that industry revenue for the four quarters ended Sept. 30 grew 25%. Operator and vendor revenue for six segments of cloud computing reached $148 billion during that period, with spending on private clouds accounting for over half the total but spending on the public cloud growing much more rapidly. As more and more companies are taking advantage of the benefits of moving to cloud services, there is a significant need for IT professionals to gain the skills needed to successfully use and implement a wide range of cloud services, making typical vendor-focused training solutions less valuable.

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[session] The App Architecture Revolution By @EmboticsCorp | @CloudExpo #Cloud #Microservices

In his session at 20th Cloud Expo, Scott Davis, CTO of Embotics, will discuss how automation can provide the dynamic management required to cost-effectively deliver microservices and container solutions at scale. He will discuss how flexible automation is the key to effectively bridging and seamlessly coordinating both IT and developer needs for component orchestration across disparate clouds – an increasingly important requirement at today’s multi-cloud enterprise.

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The End Game of Digital Transformation | @CloudExpo #IoT #M2M #Cloud

Digital transformation requires participants to have a vision for and understanding of what they are trying to achieve and why. In fact, the lack of a clear digital strategy is the second biggest mistake companies make in digital transformation, right behind moving too slowly, according to the middle managers we surveyed. Digital strategies, however, should evolve out of a documented, enterprise-focused digital transformation “doctrine.”

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Announcing @DCDnews Named “Media Sponsor” of @CloudExpo NY | #Cloud #DataCenter

SYS-CON Events announced today that Data Center Dynamics has been named “Media Sponsor” of SYS-CON’s 20th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 6–8, 2017, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY.
DCD is a global B2B events and media company, delivering unmatched insight and networking, to help the professionals driving the data center scale IT infrastructure sector to make better strategic and operational decisions.

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Dropbox and Slack Roll out New Features

Dropbox and Slack, two well-known and widely used cloud-based products, have rolled out new features to attract more customers.

The common theme among the new changes is scaling the existing products to work for the entire company instead of just a small team or group. Currently, both these services have a common weakness, which is their tendency to create fragmentation and reinforce silos because only a small group of workers can adopt them for their own use. Typically, it’s only for a team or an informal group of workers who have to collaborate together.

Though the existing features make it convenient for small groups of people to use them, it creates problems for IT departments as the existing features do not support a company-wide collaboration and use. That has changed with these new enhancements.

Dropbox’s new feature called “Dropbox Smart Sync” allows users to view all the files stored in the cloud, in their local machine as well. This way, the storage space needed in local machines can remain the same, and yet users can browse through unlimited data, and even download just what they want. An example released by the company shows that users working with just 128 GB of hard drive space can browse through terabytes of data to find what they want. Once they identify the file they want, they can simply download it to their local machine. Earlier, users needed a web browser to log in and view files, but those additional steps are not needed now.

Another new feature from Dropbox is called “Paper”, that is expected to provide a flexible platform for employees of different departments to collaborate with each other for creating, reviewing, and editing documents within an organization. Both these features encourage a company-wide access, rather than just small groups.

Like Dropbox, Slack has also expanded its features. The Slack Enterprise Grid allows companies to create an unlimited number of workspaces, so different groups can work together, and at the same time can collaborate across different groups. Currently, only a single workspace exists for the entire organization. While this may work for an organization with about 500 employees, it can get too overwhelming for an organization with say 20,000 employees. To overcome this restriction, Slack’s new features make it convenient to create many small workspaces, so it can be scaled for the entire organization as well.

This feature comes with an administrative layer to help wrap everything together and to manage all the different workspaces and communications. All this means, as an employee, you can find employees who are in other departments and workspaces and collaborate with them if you have to. But, you won’t have to read through all the messages that transpire in the other groups.

These new features from both Dropbox and Slack augur well for users, and more importantly, it shows a growing and maturing cloud market. The rolling out of such features means these companies are eyeing for a larger market share and want to stay on top of competition. Such developments are sure to increase cloud adoption, that in turn, can make collaboration and working much easier, simpler and more convenient than before.

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