Remember Dropbox? While its upstart little brother Box has been giving the tech press plenty to write about with its soap opera-styled ‘will they, won’t they’ IPO saga and proclamations of the end of the storage wars, Dropbox  has been going about its business a little more quietly.

And the company has today launched an update to its Dropbox Pro product, chief of which revolves around introducing a single plan of 1 terabyte of space at the same price of $9.99 a month.

The majority of the other changes to Dropbox’s paid individual product revolve around collaboration and security. You can now creating passwords for shared links, adding an extra layer of security; create expiry dates for shared links; and put together view-only permissions, so you can delegate as to who can read and who can edit files (below).

Picture credit: Dropbox

The updated Dropbox Pro also dabbles in content and device management by incorporating a remote wipe facility. Current Dropbox Pro users will see their software being upgraded automatically in the coming days.

A blog post announcing the move has generated mixed reviews, with positive comments being weighed out by users complaining at only one price option. Yet it’s a balancing act; there will be users ecstatic at essentially getting more storage for no extra charge, while others who don’t need 1 TB will be disappointed there aren’t lower tiered, lower cost options.

The news comes at an interesting time for Dropbox, with cloud storage vendors’ tiered business model of individual freemium and enterprise coming under scrutiny. Last month Box announced it was clearing out all storage limits for enterprise customers – you want to pay for the world, we’ll give it to you. Once the biggest vendors – Amazon, Google, Microsoft – were slashing its prices, it sounded the death knell for Box and Dropbox’s traditional models.

Last month Gartner released its Enterprise File Synchronisation and Sharing Magic Quadrant, with Dropbox finding a place in the ‘challengers’ section whilst Box placed among the leaders, behind Citrix and EMC. Yet according to this CMSWire article, for this enterprise-heavy field of business, pure cloud vendors might not be the best solution.

With Box’s BoxWorks event coming up at the start of this month, all eyes will be on CEO Aaron Levie. Investors and analysts certainly haven’t forgotten the company bailing out of its IPO in July, opting instead for more private cash.

Find out more about the latest Dropbox Pro here.

IBM-owned infrastructure as a service provider SoftLayer has always distanced itself from its IaaS brethren by continuing to provide bare metal alongside its virtual servers and software offerings.

The company has improved on this further with a series of bare metal releases which are billed by the hour and can be deployed in under 30 minutes. The overall effect of this is a greater preponderance to deploy computing-intensive workloads on SoftLayer.

“As businesses deploy more powerful workloads in the cloud, there is increased demand for performance with even shorter demand cycles,” said SoftLayer CTO Marc Jones.

“Our new hourly bare metal servers are designed to hit the sweet spot of how much power they need, how long they need it, at price points that make sense,” he added.

These prices can be seen in the table below:

SoftLayer says this latest bare metal offering will be able immediately in its Dallas, San Jose, Washington DC, London, Toronto, Amsterdam, Singapore, and Hong Kong data centres.

The London and Toronto data centres have only been recently opened, in July and August respectively. Having just celebrated the first anniversary of being acquired by IBM, SoftLayer’s press release cycle is starting to get an IBM-ish air to it; frequent and insistent. At the very least, it’s the sign of a company looking to be innovative in the space.

A blog post on the gov.uk website has outlined a hazy date of the end of September when G-Cloud migrates from the CloudStore to the new shiny Digital Marketplace.

G-Cloud’s new home, which made alpha back in March, aims to replace the CloudStore as well as the Digital Services Store, a home for finding people who can design digital projects and services.

As Ivanka Majic wrote on the government’s official blog, the move will start at the end of this month, with plans to turn the lights off on the CloudStore by the end of September, should things run smoothly.

“Digital Marketplace is reaching a stage which allows us to consider making it the route for G-Cloud purchases,” the blog reads. “We are considering a staged approach to its launch and will be making sure there is a four week transition period during which people will be able to choose whether they buy through CloudStore or Digital Marketplace.”

Andy Powell, head of product marketing at Eduserv, a G-Cloud supplier, was generally positive about the proposed change yet admitted his company was still in a “wait and see” position.

“It’s good to see consolidation across the G-Cloud and Digital Services frameworks,” he told CloudTech. “My initial reaction to the interface is that it has been streamlined quite nicely.

“The major caveat to that is that we have yet to see how Cabinet Office is going to implement their approach to the 14 cloud security principles, and associated claims made by suppliers, in terms of filtering search results,” he added.

“Given that security is likely to remain one of the key characteristics by which buyers differentiate available services, this is critical to the overall success of the marketplace as a tool for both buyers and suppliers.”

Databarracks managing director Peter Groucutt expressed similar concerns regarding search functionality in the old CloudStore.

“The truth is, vendors offering services on the G-Cloud framework had little idea as to how their services would be displayed within the CloudStore,” he said. “As a result, the simple option for vendors was to revisit old SEO tricks in a bid to boost their position.

“By improving the way vendors input information about their offerings, it provides buyers with a more accurate understanding of the services available to them,” he added.

“The improvements demonstrate that real thought is being put into the process; how the buyers buy, how the vendors will want to sell, and ensuring those on the framework have access to the right services to suit their specific needs.”

G-Cloud 5 went live back in May, with CloudTech at the time gauging the opinions of various suppliers. Most were of the opinion that while G-Cloud had made it easier for cloud providers to sell their services to government, there was still work to do in terms of procurement and education.

At the time of launch, G-Cloud programme director Tony Singleton railed against the idea of the government cloud marketplace becoming “business as usual.”

“There is much to be done in transforming the way IT is not only bought but also consumed across the wider public sector,” he warned.

The government has also urged users and suppliers to keep testing and finding bugs as the Digital Marketplace moves from alpha to beta. You can find out more about that here.

Everyone knows that if something looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it’s probably a duck – or at least we have to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family Anatidae.

Thus according to the duck test if it looks and feels like a private cloud, it should be a private cloud. Yet CenturyLink aims to turn that on its head with its latest private cloud launch, which aims to offer the agility of a public cloud but with the security of a private cloud.

Isn’t this essentially a hybrid cloud? Well, yes and no. Each private cloud instance is plugged in to CenturyLink’s public cloud nodes, thus running off the same platform and providing what IDC research vice president Melanie Posey describes as “a frictionless hybrid cloud option.”

“Hybrid cloud is the enterprise IT operational model of the future,” she adds. “CenturyLink Private Cloud provides a frictionless hybrid cloud option for organisatons that want to source private and public cloud services from a single provider and connect cloud with other IT services through an extensive Tier 1 IP network.”

The reasoning behind the public-cloud-looking private cloud is straightforward enough: you wouldn’t want to put all applications in a public cloud, so delivering the compute, storage and network of private cloud on public cloud nodes aims to be the solution.

The company says its main target base is large enterprise. Enterprises can deploy the private cloud across all CenturyLink’s data centres, spanning 57 in total and across 34 cities worldwide.

“CenturyLink Private Cloud delivers the best of private cloud – from dedicated hardware and physical isolation to enterprise-level security and service level agreements – along with our truly innovative public cloud experience, featuring advanced self-service automation and a fast pace of feature innovation,” said CenturyLink SVP cloud and technology Andrew Higginbotham.

“We spare customers from the drudgery of infrastructure management, while offering more control over what truly matters: everything that happens from the platform up,” added CenturyLink product management Jared Ruckle in a blog post.

The competition at the top of the cloud vendor race is stiff, yet with this offering CenturyLink hopes to have a stab at disrupting the top three of Google, Microsoft and Amazon. The firm slashed its prices on virtual machines and storage back in May in response to the other vendors.

Find out more about the CenturyLink Private Cloud here.

A new report from legal IT provider Accesspoint Technologies and cloud vendor Databarracks has argued how cloud computing is “a great leveller” for law firms of all sizes.

The report, written by Accesspoint managing director Richard Roebuck, draws parallels with the banking industry – even going into the semantics of the word ‘industry’ – and argues the legal industry is in danger of falling behind unless it falls into line with modernisation. This includes adopting ABS, or alternative business structures.

“This is an ideal opportunity to stand back and reassess the new market space,” Roebuck writes. “We need to ask ourselves what we’re doing now and how we need to adapt to execute on future opportunities.”

Roebuck argues that law firms need a smoothly running IT operation for three main reasons: case management on a day-to-day basis; better ability to predict future events; and being a greater repository of information for client or customer-based intelligence. He admits smaller law firms should have the advantage, observing that “big ships turn far more slowly.”

“Whilst nearly all readers will have some form of internal practice management system already in place, the smaller firms will be able to review both the technologies and processes that feed them more quickly and effectively,” he argues.

And so it comes to the ‘levelling field’ of cloud computing and “the iPad era”, according to Roebuck. The paper argues about the huge impact social media has made, and contrasts it with the “air of awkwardness” apparent when discussing how to improve the sales and marketing strategy of a law firm.

Specifically, Roebuck pointed at being able to do work outside the office as a major productivity gainer, with only a lack of cheap, quality internet connectivity the only prohibiting factor. “While this might not signal the death of the large scale central office, we’ll almost certainly see a shift towards the virtual firm,” he writes.

As for cloud, Roebuck argues the trick is “to think ahead and plan now.”

“Cloud, or a hosted and managed server solution, is a great leveller,” he writes. “It allows the small and medium sizes enterprise access to hardware and latest release software platforms that were previously the preserve of the more corporate or top-100 organisations.”

Naturally, as has been reported in various pages on CloudTech over recent months, there’s a major issue with security of data for law firms moving to the cloud. After all, all data is equal, but some data – legal, financial, medical – is more equal than others.

Roebuck, however, wishes to quell those fears, saying he finds it “hard to reconcile many of the arguments put against hosted solutions.”

“Few people think about the quality of hosted services in real terms,” he says. “Providers invest tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of pounds in their product, because without it, they don’t exist.” 

Next Generation Data CEO Nick Razey had an alternate viewpoint of the ‘inverted pyramid’ of IT infrastructure, explaining that you get what you pay for. Good data centre providers offer a trustworthy service, but if you’re happy with the cheapest option – no security, cheap infrastructure and support 9 to 5 rather than 24/7 – then whatever happens, happens.

“In short, cloud is an ideal way forward for firms who have ageing infrastructure,” Roebuck concludes. “The way forward is to investigate – it is worth going to look at the physical facilities on offer.”

The full report can be found here (subscription required). What do you make of the findings?

Microsoft suffered a blow yesterday when its Azure cloud and virtual machines suffered a series of outages before later being restored.

According to Reuters, the downtime was due to interruptions in multiple centres, with a representative from the company explaining that a small section of its customer base was affected.

A cursory glance at Azure’s status history page gives a glimpse as to the various outages suffered, with downtime logged on both August 18 and 19.

“Starting at 18 Aug 2014, 17:49 UTC, we are experiencing an interruption to Azure Services, may include Cloud Services, Virtual Machines Websites, Automation, Service Bus, Backup, Site Recovery, HDInsight, Mobile Services and possible other Azure Services in multiple regions,” the update wrote. “Customers began to experience service restoration as updates were deployed across the affected environment.”

The downtime was Microsoft’s most severe outage since February 2013. But what does this outage mean for the firm?

It’s no secret that the cloud is a major area of potential growth for Microsoft. No coincidence either that CEO Satya Nadella’s experience was in cloud and enterprise, and his first memo to employees – Microsoft’s unique marketing means that periodic rallying calls from the CEO dressed as company-wide emails are used as PR – heavily cited cloud as “the largest opportunity” for change.

Yet it wasn’t all good news in the memo last month, with job cuts inferred through the phrase “engineering and organisation changes”, and promptly delivered. Microsoft isn’t the first, and won’t be the last company to see moving resources to the cloud as a reason to let a few employees go, but it was particularly galling to see the human effects of this particular round of layoffs, as explained by software dev Jerry Berg on his Barnacules YouTube account.

Microsoft has long since been competing with Google and Amazon Web Services among others in the infrastructure as a service (IaaS) space, with a series of price cuts on storage and compute in March and April this year. Microsoft followed Amazon, who followed Google in slashing its prices, with Google SVP Urs Hölzle joking that “you need a PhD” to work out the best options.

Then earlier this month Box moved the goalposts completely and removed its storage limits altogether for business customers, keeping the hypervendors on their toes.

Recent research, from Synergy’s John Dinsdale in particular, indicates that Microsoft, along with IBM, is catching up with AWS in the IaaS race while Google is trailing behind. This latest outage won’t be catastrophic for Microsoft by any means, but it’s not as if there’s a scarcity of other candidates should customers get itchy feet.

Another day, another snippet of news from IBM in its latest push for cloudy world domination: Big Blue has announced expansion plans for Canada, including a SoftLayer data centre in Toronto.

SoftLayer chose Toronto not just for its size – it’s the fourth largest city in North America – but its proximity to the tech community in Canada, as well as a litany of companies who are using the IaaS provider.

A glut of Canadian startups, including Mnubo, Epilogger and Maegan, have signed up for the SoftLayer Catalyst program, which offers discounts and offers for SoftLayer’s infrastructure, as well as consultancy and other resources. “We are very excited to see SoftLayer open a data centre in Toronto,” said Maegan co-founder Brenda Crainic in a statement.

Canadian expansion for SoftLayer follows its previous travels, launching data centres in the UK, Hong Kong and Central Europe. Customers can store and use the data centre immediately.

Last month IBM and SoftLayer celebrated their first anniversary together with yet more announcements, including an intriguing partnership between SoftLayer and Watson which gives the Jeopardy-winning supercomputer the keys to analyse SoftLayer’s big data.

Frequent chats with SoftLayer and IBM over the course of that first 12 months have revealed nothing but praise and excitement for the way the partnership is working out. SoftLayer EMEA managing director Jonathan Wisler described the marriage as “phenomenal” to CloudTech back in June.

Naturally this isn’t the only news to come out of IBM towers in recent days: the IT giant has also announced the acquisition of Lighthouse as part of its identity and access management offering, not to mention the government contract with California that Big Blue had won last month.

Find out more about the Canadian SoftLayer data centre here.

Today’s workplace is an entirely different animal to just five years ago – and it’s growing and changing at a rapid rate.

The huge amount of enterprise mobility solutions on the market are enabling employees to do various tasks on their smartphones and tablets; as Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said on the unveiling of the Salesforce1 app, he could run his entire business from his phone.

Yet none of this could be possible without the cloud powering it, as Backupify has been investigating. The cloud provider notes that in the pre-cloud office, “computers were a mess of tangled cords and colossal towers.”

This is of course a bit of a generalisation – you can still be using towers while adopting a corporate file-sharing solution, naturally – but there are some interesting stats. It’s easy to forget that a whopping 13 floppy disks were needed to install Windows 95.

With 93% of US small and medium businesses backing up some portion of their data to the cloud, it’s evident where the trend is going. Take a look at this infographic from Backupify to see how they envisage the cloudy office:

Four in five small businesses will be “fully adapted” to the cloud by 2020, according to a new forecast from software firm Intuit.

The figures, posted in a deck entitled ‘Small Business Success in the Cloud’, prognosticated that 78% of US SMEs would be au fait in six years, as opposed to the current adoption rate of 37%.

While this was the standout stat, the overall report gives off vibes similar to Verizon’s report last week, which pigeonholed users into distinct categories. In this instance, Intuit identified four types of player that would be fully in the cloud by 2020, “moving from passive to active use of the technology”, according to a press release.

‘Plug in players’ would, as the name suggests, simply plug in to cloud providers who deliver a fully managed service – “giving small business operators the ability to focus on mission-critical areas of business”, as the PR states, while ‘head to headers’ are firms which are able to utilise cloud computing, outsourcing its IT costs, to compete with far larger vendors for contracts.

‘Hives’ will be companies which operate virtually, with employees in different locations. With the rise of the weightless office and virtual desktop infrastructure among other technologies, this is fast becoming a reality among smaller businesses. ‘Portfolioists’ however is a more obtuse category, targeting freelance employees who are optimising the cloud to make up a portfolio of work.

Intuit sees this analysis as showing off the human side of cloud computing, as well as giving a glimpse as to how entrepreneurs can utilise cloud.

“Today, the US and global economy is going through a series of shifts and changes that are reshaping the economic landscape,” said Steve King, of Emergent Research in a statement.

“In this new landscape, many people are using the power of the cloud to re-imagine the idea of small business and create new, innovative models that work for their needs.”

Recent cloud surveys include a study from Verizon which showed that two thirds of US enterprises who had adopted cloud early had seen some form of competitive advantage, as well as an IDC study which affirmed the chief financial officer will “hold the keys” to the next phase of cloud adoption.

You can find out more about the Intuit analysis here.

The latest cloudy research paper this time arrives courtesy of US telco Verizon, and shows that companies who have shown faith with the cloud early are getting a competitive advantage through increased business agility.

The research, of Harvard Business Review readers, categorised users into four different groups; enthusiasts, moderates, cautious and non-existant on cloud adoption, and showed a higher predilection for enthusiasts (35%) than any other group. 34% of respondents were moderates, while cautious (22%) and none (9%) trailed behind.

This is particularly interesting for one reason. Similar research from Quocirca and CA Technologies this time last year had three categories, of enthusiasts (22%), avoiders (23%), and blockers (3%). A middling category, where 35% of respondents sat, was for those who evaluated its usage before deciding – similar to the ‘moderates’ category in the recent Verizon study.

Around two thirds of respondents admitted they had gained at least some competitive advantage through adopting cloud. 30% their advantage had been “significant”, compared to “some” (33%), “a little” (11%), and “none” (8%).

It’s the usual plethora of statistics concerning cloud adoption, although this stat came as a surprise to CloudTech HQ. The most popular cloud deployment is private (41%) according to respondents, followed by hybrid (35%) and public (13%). This goes at odds with greater public cloud deployment, although a recent article from David Linthicum gives credence to the future of the private cloud as a point of control, or interfaces, into public clouds.

The Verizon report notes, correctly, the correlation between companies cautious about the cloud and private cloud uptake. Yet this also correlates with business value derived from cloud, according to the respondents. The biggest win was simplification of HR and CRM (37%), followed by better delivery of internal resources (33%), and greater ways for employee collaboration (31%).

“This research shows that cloud is not just taking a seat at the table; it’s already delivering significant benefit and becoming the norm,” wrote Siki Giunta, Verizon SVP cloud, data centre and connected solutions in a preamble generously titled the ‘sponsor’s perspective.’

She added: “In those early days of cloud computing, the same concerns came up time and again: security, compliance, and loss of control. But years of hard work by governments, standards bodies, vendors, and enterprises themselves have improved transparency, data portability, integration, manageability, and performance.”

Verizon, lest we forget, announced its own cloud platform in October, with various companies – Oracle for middleware, CloudBees to name two – signing up to partner. Despite its various problems with the FCC elsewhere, Verizon hopes that its long standing security and enterprise expertise enables customers to “cloud with confidence”, in the words of the official site.

Find the full report here.