Why "Enterprise SaaS" may soon be a misnomer
One of the most exciting developments to hit the enterprise software world in decades was the rise of SaaS. Companies like Salesforce.com blazed a trail that built enormous amounts of wealth and improved the lives of end-users. Prior to SaaS, most enterprise software was sold based on perpetual licenses, to CIOs and IT departments, with [...]
Box Answers IT Concerns–Deeper Security Option Roll Out
Just a couple of weeks ago I wrote about Dropbox releasing an entire swathe of new security functionality that sees it firmly mark itself as entering the corporate market and responding to the needs of IT. As I said at the time, Dropbox has long signaled an intention to move up the food chain. In [...]
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, [...]
FileLocker Launches By Taking a Shot at Dropbox and Box
In launching FileLocker, InfraScale CEO Ken Shaw is claiming that both DropBox and Box have been “substantially misrepresenting their capabilities when it comes to security and won’t be adopted by enterprise or Government” because of it. Those are pretty strong words…
On Not Forgetting to be 10x Better
I was struggling what to make of the news that now, AT&T too was jumping into the cloud storage-as-a-commodity business offering 5GB of free online storage. Just like DropBox. And Google Drive. And Box, if you use it that way. And iCloud. And SkyDrive. And. And. And. You could make fun of it, but it [...]
Cloud Architecture And Best Of Breed
As cloud computing becomes all the more pervasive, people are rethinking the idea of buying software and hardware suites in favor of best of breed approach. In a way, cloud architecture makes it easy to avoid the integrated stack lock-in as interoperability through open APIs is taken for granted in most cases. At Boxworks 2012, [...]
Pre BoxWorks Thoughts: Box To Play Best Of Breed Game?
I am on the plane to attend BoxWorks 2012, the annual user conference of Box. Before hearing anything from Box, I am trying to make sense of Box’s strategy based on what I heard in the past 3 weeks during Salesforce and Tibco events. It will be interesting to hear from Box in the next [...]
Nothing Stops the Box Bunny
OK, so I ‘m abandoning my pictorial post schedule, as Box-mania just broke out, and I feel compelled to jump in. But the skipped NetSuite post is coming soon… I’ve been following Box longer than probably most observers and some of the old memories are worth sharing – from an admittedly subjective point of view. [...]
A Pictorial Tale of Two Conferences (and more)
Recently I’ve attended two conferences two weeks apart in San Francisco, and the difference in style is shocking. One did not even feel like a conference, rather a Festival – Woodstock, Mardi Gras, SXSW – your pick:-) The other a decidedly more “closed” traditional corporate conference, so much so, that fellow commentators actually compared it [...]
Tucon 2012: Initial Thoughts
I am on my way back from Tucon 2012, Tibco’s annual user conference at Las Vegas. During the event I had a chance to talk with Tibco execs, partners, customers and fellow analysts. I thought I will do a quick post talking about my initial thoughts on what I heard there. Tibco’s rise to fame [...]
Box Solves the Enterprise Adoption Roadblock
I’ve spent the last few years watching the meteoric rise of cloud content management vendor Box. Their approach has been to empower individual groups or business units within an organization to collaborate more effectively around their content and then to expand their presence within the organization. The “land and expand” strategy is a valid one, [...]
From Small Box to … Large Box
Warning: mindless weekend post Boxes come in all sizes. Some small, others large, some start small but grow large. I’ve been tracking one since they were very-very small: As they grew, the moved to bigger and bigger boxes offices, like this one, where even toilets had flat screens: And finally they are in the [...]
With Box OneCloud, Organizations Can Embrace Both BYOD And BYOA
Box (previous CloudAve coverage), the enterprise software company formerly known as Box.net, yesterday announced Box OneCloud, their enterprise grade cloud platform to unify business information. With this announcement, they solved a major pain point experienced by the business users. They have also added some social features which will hep them fend off the competition from [...]
Google Cloud Storage–Enterprise Announcements Roll In from Panzura and Zmanda
We’ve been talking for years about Google offering a storage system to take on the likes of Box and DropBox. It’s an obvious development for the company who arguable has the best economics around data storage on earth. Last year we got an inkling of this direction with the release
On Privacy, US Legislation and Cloud Vendors
While in the US a week or two ago I spent some time talking with vendors about the security of Cloud data, in particular the impact of the DCMA and Patriot Act on non US customers of vendors. As part of my research I spent some time talking with Lindsay
