Category Archives: Personal Cloud

Apple, consumer cloud, Consumer Tech, News & Analysis, Personal Cloud

Apple to sell ‘personal cloud’ products instore from June

ApolloPromise Technologies has announced Apple will exclusively sell its Apollo ‘personal cloud’ appliances instore from June 7.

The product itself is billed by Promise as a safer way to share and save photos, videos and files, which can be uploaded from anywhere in the world through the Apollo Cloud App which are then stored on a physical device which is owned by the customer. While the device does allow customers to utilize the internet to upload files and data, the offering is seemingly very similar to an external hard drive.

“Promise has a relentless commitment to innovating new solutions that improve how we live and work,” said HC Chang, GM of Promise Technology APAC. “Apollo is our latest innovation, however, it is just the beginning as we are looking at building a whole new line of solutions for the IoT market. We are looking forward to showcasing Apollo to the many users passionate about technology and we are excited to hear their innovative ideas on what the next generation of Apollo should offer.”

The news was made public by the Promise Technologies team at Computex in Taiwan, and to-date there has been no comment from Apple.

Apple has been making efforts in recent months to bolster its position in the cloud marketplace, and this latest effort would appear to be a move towards the consumer market. The company does already play a role within the consumer world; iCloud is a similar offering to Dropbox; though the Promise technology would appear to an alternative for the security conscious customers. In the enterprise world, the company has recently announced a partnership with SAP, to develop iOS apps based on the SAP HANA cloud platform, as well as entering the e-Health market with the launch of CareKit, an open-source software framework.

The introduction of products geared towards the consumer market is not a new move for the industry, as there are already a number of tech giants fighting for market share. Statista estimates 1.74 billion people will be using personal cloud storage worldwide by 2017, with this number increasing to 2.04 billion in 2019.

Dropbox could generally be considered the market leader, announcing it had exceeded 500 million users in March, with Google’s Drive and Microsoft’s OneDrive, also offering similar services. The Promise solution would appear to be a private-cloud-twist for consumers, with increased security claims as well as a customer’s maintaining oversight of their own data, though it is ultimately a ‘on premise’ product, as the company makes no mention of cloud back-up storage. As mentioned before, it would appear to be very similar to an external hard drive, with the added benefits of internet-enabled uploading features.

forecast, News & Analysis, Personal Cloud, Research

World personal cloud worth $90 billion by 2020 says Allied Market Research

metalcloud_lowresThe personal cloud market will have a compound annual growth rate of 33.1 per cent between now and 2020, by which time it will be worth $89.9 billion globally, according to a new study.

The report, World Personal Cloud Market- Opportunities and Forecasts, 2014-2020, says growing customer awareness of personal cloud services is driving the growth. Europe and the USA will be surpassed by the Asia-Pacific region as the most voracious users of personal cloud apps, with the latter accounting for two-fifths of total market share in 2020.

Advances in smartphones, tablets and mobile devices have boosted the growth of the personal cloud market as storage needs grow, it says. The change was catalysed by the virtualizing of the work environment as employers began using personal cloud storage as a solution to work problems, says the report.

Growth rate apart, the main finding of the study by Allied Market Research was that there has been a reversal of expectations, with individuals dictating the growth of corporate networks.

In addition, the study found that the personal cloud will become a conduit for lead generation and other indirect marketing methods. These could create new opportunities and provide the potential for revenue generated through advertising. Individuals will continue to lead the personal cloud as a result of the increasing influence of personal digital content, as devices with cameras proliferate and visuals become increasingly influential in the multimedia world, says the study.

The faster growth rate enjoyed by the Asia-Pacific region is anticipated as a result of different consumer behaviour in a different computing environment. Its population has significantly higher usage of multimedia devices coupled with faster broadband networks, according to the report.

Another strong influence will be exerted by the established market players, such as Google, Apple, Microsoft and Dropbox, who are leading the market with their flexible packages and affordable pricing structure. Their advanced features and attractive app prices, such as two-factor authentication for security, have improved customer satisfaction and driven wider adoption. The addition of Dropbox’s two-factor authentication, in June 2015, is cited as a major confidence builder in the personal cloud.

In turn, the mobile social media applications made possible by the new multi-featured, affordable smartphones created the demand for storing personal data using personal cloud platforms. Improvised secure features helped to popularise personal data storage and make the cloud a less ominous proposition, said the report.

BitTorrent Sync, Clive Thompson, CodeLathe, Personal Cloud, Private Cloud, Tonido

Lessons Learned from Running My Own Cloud From My Kitchen (Clive Thompson)

From Wired comes a good opinion read on the author’s experiences and insights derived from setting up his own private cloud server using Tonido.

It’s Time for You to Take the Cloud Back From Corporations (Clive Thompson)

“…it’s a “personal cloud”: I own and run the hardware. The simple act of building and running it has given me a glimpse of a possible alternate future for the Internet. It’s an increasingly popular one too.”

“Another outcome: You realize that, holy Moses, putting stuff online is not rocket science anymore.”

“Granted, personal clouds create new problems. A blizzard knocked out my DSL for a day, taking my cloud with it. A house fire destroys not just your laptop but your cloud backup as well.”

Read it all