Cloud Pour and Hard Disk Erosion?

Everyday new service providers are entering into the cloud space giving new offers for hard drive space up in the sky. Microsoft with SkyDrive, DropBox one of the pioneers,  Adrive, Box.net, Carbonite list goes on….

Now with this list being growing day by day it would be fascinating to watch the trends growing in this arena. What about the fate of the list of external hard drive manufacturers like Seagate, Hitachi, Samsung, Western Digital, Transcend Storejet, Lacie Rikiki and the innumerous brands we have in the domestic markets dumped straight from Chinatown?

Has the growth of cloud overshadowed the hard disk market and eaten up any major portion of the pie?

Storage being the fastest  cloud service growing at a rate of 9% ie  $1.6Billion  to  14%  ie over  $14Billion  as per the IDC reports. IDC  reports  show that the worldwide external disk storage revenue has been declining year over year 18.3% in 2009 totalling $4.1Billion. Also the growing success of cloud in stealing the confidence of the customers  could be another nail on the coffin of external hard disks.

The backup solution strategies have paid off to the hard disk companies like Lacie, but at the same time cloud has been pouring down on to the desktop in the form of huge number of desktop applications to pull up the data from local hard disks.

The cloud will lie peacefully on the top of the Gartner hyperbole untill they find another technology to take the “Hype-dom”.  Till then cloud hype can shatter many more markets.

Desktop – A Stairway to the Cloud

I write this post while listening to music from Grooveshark, an online music streaming service. Now I work more with Google Docs than MS-Office. More of Dropbox than pendrives. More of Cloud office, Cloud music, Cloud videos, cloud anything…

Cloud computing and cloud apps are spreading like wildfire. The cloud sits right on the peak of inflated expectations in the 2009 Gartner hype cycle of emerging technologies. Any online technical news feed now have special feeds for the cloud while others have started dedicated cloud computing blogs and articles.

A lot of discussions, articles and research material are available in the cloud which contribute to the hype or hope of Cloud Computing. Accordingly there are many applications being developed to cater to the needs of the cloud users.

Among them are those which aim to bridge the gap between the cloud and the desktop. These apps provide access to the user’s cloud data through applications residing on the end users desktop.

One of the popular applications is Gladinet, which has now been around for an year. This tool allows you to mount your Windows Skydrive, Google Docs, Picasa Albums, etc. on your local computer. There are many other applications who have followed the trend in providing acccess to cloud services to simple yet useful apps – DropBox client for file sharing, Tweetdeck (and a hoard of other apps) for accessing social networking sites, Spotify to access the music in the cloud, the list goes on..

Are we seeing a horizon where the cloud meets the desktop? Its a good idea to have a copy of our important files on a location away from the cloud. Yeah, you never know who gets beaten in the race to hard disk failure – your hard drive or the cloud server with tons of DR servers, anything is possible with technology. Even the most complicated and finely coded pieced of software or precisely manufactured hardware is susceptible to total failure in seconds. In this world where people and nations are paranoid of every step taken by firms reigning the cloud kingdom, it helps to have copy of your data safely tucked away on your local drive. Still, only time will ascertain whether the desktop for the cloud is here to stay or not.