Apple, Google and microsoft in the battle for Cloud

Cloud storage and applications are quickly becoming critical to consumers’ mobile lives in a converged world. The age of carrying personal memory devices or mailing documents to oneself is yesterday. Cloud-based productivity tools are now principal and key to manage documents access content and control one’s data from multiple devices. The cloud truly represents the future of storage beyond physical media.
The launch of Google Drive drives the competition in clouds to the next level. Apple, Google and Microsoft (the trio yet again) are at it… each trying to reinvent and redisgn cloud to augment their world of converged services and seamless connectivity. Google starts off from Gmail by providing all account holders 5GB space in the cloud. One can opt for higher capacities in storage albeit for a price.

Interestingly enough Microsoft which was magnanimous with 25GB of Skydrive space has offered a miserly 7GB. The cost factor can be a real dampener both for Google and Microsoft. Even while Microsoft seems to have a better product compared to Apple and Google and Google needs to perfect its cloud storage solution….Again the pricing and storage is a masterstroke from Apple given that most of the storage is used in media files. By tightly integrating and controlling media (video, audio and games) in its eco-system and making the storage of such items free, Apple is offering a value to the consumer in terms of judicious and prudent use of storage space.

Here’s how the three giants stack up on the cloud storage solutions -

Let the battle of cloud spaces begin….

Integrating the elements of convergence: The case for APIs

Convergence has been the buzz word for a good part of the last decade and will continue to do so in this decade as well. However, for the discerning the definition or at least the meaning of convergence has now shifted from device convergence to technology convergence. The later being the superset of which devices are just another maifestation. So earlier its was the camera, the mobile phone, the GPS, the MP3 player and other such device charecterestics that really converged. However, in the present context it is the convergence of enabling technologies and the three big technologies that seem to be convergent at this time are: Mobility, Cloud Services and Big Data.

However, it is a relatively small lynchpin that drives the convergence of these three mega trends. Small in terms of what it is, but large in terms of the innovation spurts that it provides. The key here is APIs or Application programming Interfaces. APIs tie together the mega-trends in a fundamental and unalterable way. APIs are the lingua franca of the new wave in internet of all things combined with super mobility and seamless connectivity. In my mind, each of these three technology trends (on their own) will be on the fast track to commoditization and will risk facing the same fate as did most social business software plays. The magic and the premiums will come from contextual application of this innovation and smart integration.

To stake a few examples, Box.net as storage without document and device sync and collaboration is commodity. Apple’s iCloud as storage without ubiquitous local and iTunes media sync across devices is commodity. And Google Drive (as discussed here in Ben Kepes’ CloudU community) is also a commodity business not worth getting into had it not been for Google’s services such as Google Apps, Piccasa, and its media and unified communication capabilities under the Google Plus brand.

The premiums from big data, mobile access and cloud comes from
a) dynamically assembled media and content, and interpreted data in the cloud,
b) available wherever you need to consume and / or collaborate and
c) insanely focused and simple interfaces to complex backends.

Thats where money would be made in these commoditized services. APIs provide the integration through the value creation network. The only other differentiator in this case being experience!

Will iCloud do to Cloud Computing what iPhone to Smartphones and iPod did to Media Consumption? (Turn it on its head)

Is it the new MobileMe? Is it the new iTunes? Or is it a whole new definition for the cloud? Or a whole new trend in media consumption habits. It could also be the biggest champion for bits as against disks. It may be the final in terms of software beating hardware…

Apple today enveils the iCloud®, Apple’s upcoming cloud services offering. Many believe that iCloud, will do the same for “the Cloud” as the iPod did for MP3s. It is expected to massify the cloud.
AT the surface, iCloud is the iTunes streaming service. Apple is already supposed to have secured DRM agreements with Universal, Sony BMG, EMI and Warner. However, the music streaming subscription services could just be the tip of a larger iceberg of services which could fundamentally alter the course of desktop computing and migrate the services to the cloud.

There are dozens of cloud options available with Microsoft’s platform for syncing files across multiple devices and servers. Dropbox makes it possible to sync files to the internet. Google just launched Google Music. Amazon has their Cloud Player. Then there is Spotify. Coming from Apple, the iCloud is supposed to provide consumer value, differentiation from what’s come before and a way of taking the market forward. Apple was not the first company to offer downloads of music. But they did it the best and therefore conquered the market. They weren’t first with MP3 players or smartphones. Yet again iCloud launches after Google and Amazon have served up their streaming music services and yet iCloud can overturn the tables by being the most radical and the best.

iCloud may not be restricted to music. It could be synchronization for all files — it could involve video, office files. Apple has agreements with Disney, Paramount Pictures, and Sony Pictures to feature their movies on the iCloud. It will be interesting to see if new business models are introduced. An Apple cloud service could potentially benefit from the huge existing base of iTunes accounts

Apple has the ability and the talent to build a system that, works across platforms. Imagine being able to buy a movie, but never having to worry about downloading it anywhere. Add to that just inserting a DVD into your superdrive, having it recognize such, and having it added to your library, which doesn’t matter if it’s on your computer’s hard disk or in the cloud. The back-end licenses with music and video labels will help Apple introduce scan-and-match technology that scans a user’s hard drive and provides access to music found there from the company’s own servers.Or photo storage, or Apps or more…

The concept of a “disk” will thus be gone. One won’t even think about where on a computer to store things – they will just save, and you’ll be able to access them with ease, from wherever the location, to whatever computer or device. It eliminates “My Computer”,C: drive, root directory, user directory, “My Documents”, “My Pictures”. It will just be “save” and “search”. Nothing else to ever think about again.
Competitors, including RIM, Google, Amazon and Microsoft already have a hard time competing with iTunes as it is, will likely find it even tougher with iCloud enhancements. iCloud has the potential to be a new model for media consumption, which could also spark more demand for Apple devices. iCloud by itself will not be a billion dollar revenue opportunity – It is an enabling technology … once you have things in the cloud, you can create new devices that (have not) been created right now.

Chromebook (Part V): The wish list for Chromebook improvements!

I have featured Chromebooks in four blogs earlier. Read them here: The cloud kisses the laptop, Subscriptions that might have changed the industry standards, Google’s own iPad Moment and 10 reasons why Chromebooks haven’t really won a lot of admirers out there! (Not Yet!). This one is a reproduction of an article bv Desire Athow.

Chromebooks are atleast 3 weeks off from stores and sales and inspite of the drubbing that Chromebook has received from Blogosphere, Amazon reports Chromebooks already in the top 20 “most wished for” items in the laptop category.

The original Chromebooks though are far from being perfect and there are at least four things that can be done to improve the current generation quite easily actually.

1. ARM instead of Intel: ARM’s biggest strengths centres around its battery consumption. Toshiba AC100-10U laptop (ARM powered) , which runs Android, is cheaper by a third and weighs 40 per cent less while having a similar battery life compared to the average Chromebook.
What’s even more incredible is that the AC100 uses a 2200mAh, 3-cell battery, compared to 6-cell 8280mAh monster on the Samsung Chromebook. Intel powered devices have more expensive and bulkier brick-type power adaptors, whereas ARM based ones are likely to have smaller, cheaper wall-type models.

2. Speaking of the battery in the Chromebook, making it removable would be a great idea as the laptop only supports up to 1000 cycles or around 18 months in the worse case scenario.

3. Bringing in an Ethernet port – a conspicuous omission – would also make a lot of sense especially if you have to set up the laptop in a notspot zone in the first place.

4. Connectivitywise, turning Chromebooks into hotspots would be a pretty cool addition indeed, something that Connectify does already for Windows and Google already achieved with Android since Froyo.

The art of perfecting a product is a multi-iterative process and Chromebooks will also follow the same trend in time.

Chromebooks (Part IV): 10 reasons why Chromebooks haven’t really won a lot of admirers out there! (Not Yet!)

Contd from earlier posts: The cloud kisses the laptop, Subscriptions that might have changed the industry standards and Google’s own iPad Moment.

With Chromebook, Google has redrawn the boundaries of desktop virtualization. However, there apprehensions, the biggest being, Netbook as a category is loosing out to the Tablets. While Chromebook has the Cloud edge, could Google have done better with ChromeTab. Listing out a few neagtive thoughts and reactions behind the Chromebook…

1. While, Chromebooks can connect with external devices such as cameras (via USB) and headsets,it is maimed by the exclusion of Apple users. The millions of existing iPhone, iPad and iPod owners cannot use the Chromebook with those devices. That is one task the Chromebook can’t perform, and it is unlikely it ever will. Google will be looking at convincing Apple product owners that they need to switch, or forget the Chromebook. That is a huge unreachable market for a brand new product. (ZDNet).

2. Chromebooks retail at $349 at the least. Will people want to pay as much for such a light client device as they do for a fully loaded notebook running a traditional OS like Microsoft Windows? The Chromebook Series 5 is powered by a 1.66GHz dual-core Intel Atom N570 processor, and has a 16GB mSATA solid-state drive and 2GB of RAM. Those are netbook parts in a machine that’s priced at the level of low-end notebooks. (PC Mag)

3. As the recent Amazon Web Services outage demonstrated, cloud services can fail and customers can lose data (Information Week). Google itself has faced loads of Gmail incidents loosing valuable user data.

4. With Cloud centric OS’es, the race will be towards stealing access credentials, after which, it’s game over. Who needs to steal banking accounts, when you have Google Checkout? Or, who needs to monitor passwords, when they’re all nicely stored into the Google Dashboard?…Earlier today, I got asked by a friend- ‘How is Chrome OS from a security point of view, better or worse?’ I answered, ‘It’s better, but much worse. (Software Security at Kaspersky)

5. Google’s foray into hardware products have not really been successful. Need to look beyond the Nexus One and Nexus S? Has Google learned its lessons from its cell phone debacle? We’ll see.

6. We’d be forced to stick to a browser for hours. Is it not worth to wait 15 to 20 seconds for Windows 7 to boot on Netbooks and have the flexibility to work with any application? Microsoft came under heavy fire for taking advantage of its Windows operating system to promote Windows Media Player and Internet Explorer, even though you can download any browser using the IE. Now how about sticking to the Chrome browser for the entire life cycle of your Netbook! That’s really not a good Idea. People often criticize ‘Apple’ for crippling their devices off the features and for controlling the third party applications to generate more and more revenue. If that is bad, then have a look at Google’s business model. They have outdone Apple in terms of crippling the usability. Google wants you to buy a Netbook with nothing but a Chrome Browser onboard. All the applications you’d run would be within the browser; all your family photos and videos would be directly saved on Google’s server, multitasking is out of question (yes, there will be a new tab but that doesn’t count as multitasking), and it will update automatically without giving you the option to decide whether or not you wish to download and apply the update.

7. There’s much to recommend the platform, we can confidently say it’s still years away from the replacing most business machines. Google offers ways of working around the platform’s limitations – it just unveiled a new local file manager, and Citrix is providing a desktop virtualization tool for running legacy applications – but these tools can take you only so far. Usability for instance without internet connected is short, and though HTML5 and Open standards platform address this issue, it still is a drawback that needs to be addressed. Aregister

8. The Chromebooks aren’t suited to things like video editing, and they’re quite limited when it comes to most multimedia or design tasks. But the problem goes beyond an inability to run certain applications. In many cases the ease of usage and a friendly interface is lacking and will take some time to come up on its steam.

9. Your computer has no hard drive. You can’t download them and move them somewhere else. You can’t change services. You have nowhere to go. That’s a lot of power to give one company, isn’t it? (SearchEngineWatch)

10. The Chromebook for all its cloud related advantages is not as trendy and path breaking as the iPad or the Android tablets. Could Google have been wiser to have worked on a ChromeTab as against a Chromebook. We will see that.

A survey by British website, Inquirer, asked its readers: Would they prefer to store their documents and data locally instead of surrendering it to a Google Chromebook and its cloud storage? Only a small minority of readers are tempted by the devices, vindicating my thought that netbooks in terms of form factors are not anywhere close to the Tablets. The result of the survey was that
7% prefered a Google Chromebook because they thought it would be useful for their purposes, just browsing the net.
4% liked it because it is ‘an inexpensive laptop’
16% would rather buy a tablet
47% prefer to keep personal documents on PC/Laptop, suggesting that perhaps the cloud, or at least Google’s cloud, has little appeal.
26% respondents didnot know what a Chromebook was. The 26% is a good number, because it means that 74% respondents know the Chromebook.

Unsurprisingly, a lot of people are skeptical. However, It’s worth remembering that the iPad similarly met with a barrage of criticism and did change how we think about computers.

Chromebooks (Part III): The cloud kisses the laptop (Would have been glad if it would have been the Tablet)

Continued from an earlier post.

The idea of a computing device with most of the computing systems outsourced to the cloud is a novel one and has been around for a while now. Here are the reasons on why it is ground breaking?

Chrome OS simplifies the operating system by putting most all applications and data inside the browser, and in doing so, it takes a multilayered approach to security, restricting each application to its own sandbox and introducing a verified boot sequence that seeks to identify malware at startup time.

All OS updates, including security fixes, are automatically pushed down to the device over the web, and since virtually no applications or data files sit on device itself, it’s easier to set up a machine – or move to a new one when it is lost or stolen or bricked. What’s more, Chromebooks – equipped with flash drives – offer unusually fast boottimes.

With a Chromebook users won’t wait minutes for computers to boot and browsers to start. This provides access to email in seconds. The Chromebook provides automatic access to updates which will get faster over time.All individual apps, games, photos, music, movies and documents will be accessible from wherever the user is and the Chromebook will provide freedom from hassles like worrying on loss of computer and data backing up. Just because the back end systems are lightb and easy, Chromebooks will last a day of use on a single charge. With optional 3G, accessibility to web is direct. Chromebooks have many layers of security built in so there is no anti-virus software to buy and maintain.

The MAJORITY of Internet Users are people who only go onto the PC for four activities: Email, Shopping, Online Banking, Facebook. The fact remains that do not users get Dual or quadcore, 4 GB of memory, DDR2, DDR3, Photoshop, Video Editing, Access, Excel and Word is MEANINGLESS to most people who are not Professionals. Add to it the need to buy AntiVirus, Firewall Protection, OS maintenance and the hardware purchase turns onerous. Users just want to Log in, Look at their email, post to Facebook & Pay a bill. Beyond that, the the most strenuous task they’ll ever put on their laptop might be streaming a HD Movie.

Although it remains to be seen how well Chrome OS works when deprived of internet access, the potential for Chromebooks to slash both IT support hassles and the amount of money spent on hardware and software is very enticing. We will get to know the response to Chromebooks in a while. But for me i think the idea of a ChromeTab is much more attractive and enticing.

Chromebook (Part II): Subscriptions that might have changed industry standards

Google has smartly aimed it squarely at the enterprise and the education system. It will be sold to consumers, too, and that’s the market segment that may give Google the most fits with the Chromebook.

Google will charge businesses $1,008 to use netbooks for three years. The subscription requires a three-year contract, and it includes not only continuous software updates but also a web-based management console, Google support, and hardware replacements.This translates into a $28 per user subscription plan for businesses and it can be an affordable way for small businesses to provide laptops to its users, but to really satisfy enterprise users, Google needs to woo its IT decision makers. The value here is that enterprise and education customers can count on a dramatic decrease in costs from a maintenance standpoint.

Secondly, Google will provide 100MB of free 3G data each month through its partner Verizon wireless. Interestingly, the deal ends after two years (rather than lasting for the life of the product).

Three years is an awfully long time, particularly when you’re dealing with a comparatively low-spec machine such as the ones announced from Acer and Samsung today (both of which will ship June 15th). But for businesses and educational institutions, is it good enough? It’s also worth noting that Google considered shorter contracts (with higher monthly fees), but it found during market research that most institutions never upgraded their machines before three years, anyway. Given that data, it just made sense to offer lower monthly rates and on a refresh cycle that fit nicely with what they found.

According to a recent Gartner Research survey, typical businesses spend between $3,300 and $5,800 on each of its desktops. The subscription model for Chromebook will ultimately save a hefty portion of these dollars because the machine is both easier to administer and more secure than traditional machines.

Google’s subscription plan, reduces the total cost of ownership to less than half what enterprises see right now. The Chromebooks would be launched 15th June and it would be interesting to note which way is it headed. Google on its part is firing all cylinders to ensure its success.

Chromebook (Part1): Google’s own iPad moment

Google’s IO conference had its share of moments with Google Music Beta service, The Ice-cream Sandwich, The Android Open Accessory development tool kit to bridge over the fragmentation and multi-device conundrum that they have had so long and the long awaited ChromeBooks. I had 2 years ago blogged about Light and Zippy Oss that would power the Internet computing world. That day it seems has finally come. Here’s documenting the Chrome powered Chromebook’s, Google’s Internet Netbooks.

Outstanding intro video for the Chromebook

The web-only laptops fundamentally reinvent computers. Chromebooks are built and optimized for the web, where users are already spend most of their computing time. The Chromebook essentially enables a faster, simpler and more secure experience without all the headaches of ordinary computers. Google and its vast server farms take care of apps, backup, security, maintenance and support.

The Chromebook is powered by the Chrome web browser and uses the HTML5 and other open standards platforms. With Google providing offline support, which now lets users access their Google Docs, Google Calendar and Gmail accounts without an Internet connection, the product story is well stacked. This will certainly alleviate the concerns of those who may want to work on their Chromebooks on a plane, or at locations where there is no Internet connection. Caching documents on local storage is not an issue, as all Chromebooks implement data encryption using tamper-resisting hardware to protect against the theft.

Google thus marries the prowess of centralized processing or cloud computing to lean machines. The machines featured are Samsung and Acer. Samsung’s notebooks have 12.1″ displays, Atom Dual-Core processors, 16 GB solid state drives, weigh 1.48 kg and get 8.5 hours of continuous usage. They’re similar to the Acer notebooks, which have 11.6″ displays, a higher resolution, but only get 6 hours of usage. Some of the notebooks include 3G support, while other notebooks are Wi-Fi only.The onboard processor is an Intel Dual Core Atom, coupled with 2 GB RAM. Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n is going to be a standard for all Chromebooks. Variants with 3G module would also be available. Chromebook would usually sport 2 USB 2.0 ports and a memory card reader. Unlike the Samsung s line up, Acer will have a Chromebook with HD-out feature. Both companies will be releasing two or more variants with minor differences.

Is cloud computing as reliable as we thought?

On the early morning of April 21 (Pacific Day Time), Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) data centre in Virginia crashed, taking down with it several popular websites and small businesses that depend on it. These included favoured social networking destinations like Evite, Quora, Reddit and Foursquare, among others. This outage continued through to the next 3 days. The duration of the outage has surprised many, since Amazon has a lot of backup computing infrastructure. The online businesses affected by the EC2 outage lost that many hours of ad revenues, business opportunities and drops of the precious trust of many loyal followers, a primary pillar of social networking. These losses are hard to quantify. The question is being asked: if an Amazonian cloud giant can crash so badly, what about the rest? If Amazon can’t safeguard the cloud, how can we rely upon it so? So the debate begins on the future of cloud computing and what to do to make users and companies put their trust in cloud vendors such as Amazon.

The good thing about the cloud is that it protects users when their own home computers crash and lose data. But the rotten part about the crash of the cloud is that millions upon millions of users become helpless and any recovery of the data is beyond their control. Eventually, the cloud will become like a utility. You can get as much computing power as you want with the flip of a switch and you won’t have to worry about outages as much over time. But we’re clearly not there yet.

Cloud isn’t magic like they earlier thought it was. It is rather merely about viability and not about continuous availability. Continuous Availability sold cloud computing to many small businesses, including the ever-increasing social networking bandwagon. SMEs are now graduating to the next level of cloud computing, using it not just for storage, but also for active computing purposes like communication, sustaining remote workforces and deploying cloud services like remote IT help, cloud operating systems , and so on. The impact of such an outage, therefore, is felt even more.

Although Amazon will probably recover quickly, the event has damaged its credibility. Amazon has been a personification of the spirit of the Internet, which is one of true democracy, access to the means of distribution, and rapid evolution. However, in this case, Amazon has been cryptic about the cause and it has only said that matters are improving but were still not resolved. If Amazon can explain the problem and make a good case for why the damage may not be big, then it will be fine. If not, the work will go elsewhere. Amazon may be a big player, but there are other big players waiting to step into the game.These include the likes of Google , IBM , Cisco, RedHat and Microsoft (whose cloud ads are all over Silicon Valley), to name a few.

Even the darkest cloud has a silver lining and this outage will be critical in determining a lot of supporting factors which will be critical for customers/ Corporations to consider before they engage the cloud infrastructure.

• Some sites spend the money to run mirror sites on other cloud vendors, so the sites can remain functional even if one cloud vendor goes down. But that’s an expense that many web sites haven’t taken.
• Corporations will have to decide what computer operations to put on a cloud operated by external vendors and how much they should keep inside their own internal data centers.
• Customers will have to figure out the right policies for backup and recovery services. A right suite of legal conditions to serve disaster management situations such as these will be important.
• Businesses will have to decide whether to allocate more money to backup data centers in multiple locations.

Did Amazon check-mate Google and Apple in the quest to Digital content storage in cloud?

I had written about Apple’s music subscription services from the cloud and Google Cloud Streaming Music services. With the launch of its Digital music locker service, Amazon has beaten beat Apple and Google in the race to the cloud. Amazon has also launched its own cloud drive which would be a personal data disk in the cloud. While Google has started testing its Music streaming internally, Apple is working ona complete overhaul of its MobileMe services and will not look at a launch till Q3, 2011!

The Digital Music locker, lets users store their music (AAC/MP3 formats in their original bit-rates) on the Web and then listen to their collections on computers (PC/Mac) with a Web browser or on Android devices. Consumers can store their digital songs, videos, photos, documents, and music. In addition, Amazon also rolled out the Cloud Player, which enables people to play the songs they uploaded to Cloud Drive.

The ability to access music across a range of devices from the cloud directly eliminates the need of music transfer from computer to music players and cell-phones etc. Amazon’s music locker can be accessed from all the major browsers: Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome and Safari.The Cloud Drive also allows customers to upload photos, videos, and documents, but those digital files are accessible only via a Web browser on a computer.

However. Amazon is yet to license the rights from top Hollywood studios and music companies which would otherwise mount to violation of legal copyrights, licensing agreements and IPR for Amazon. Apple, Google, and Spotify appear to have put themselves at a disadvantage by waiting to roll out their cloud offerings until they obtained licenses.

What this means for the cloud and competition?

There’s nothing all that world-changing about Amazon’s announcements. Plenty of companies are already offering online storage for free, and music streaming services are also on offer by many. However its the mash-up of music streaming, cloud storage, cloud storage of e-books and movies which is suddenly making Amazon such a potent threat to Apple and Google. Movies you buy from its video-on-demand service, for instance, already stay on Amazon’s servers, so they’re safe and sound even if your hard disk crashes. And Kindle e-books automatically get shelved in an online archive, so you can download them to a Kindle e-reader, smart phone or computer — or all of the above.

Users today have multiple computers, smart phones, tablets and even Internet-connected TVs.They had want personal digital media content to be accessible on all of them. Keeping it on the Internet makes that possible.Amazon is thus quickly moving to be the one stop shop for all “digital belongings” which were earlier a part of the local computer hard drive and will in future be available across devices and platforms.