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From my perspective, Dropbox was doomed to decline ever since they made a big splash about how proud they were of moving off of public cloud in to self manage d

From my perspective, Dropbox was doomed to decline ever since they made a big splash about how proud they were of moving off of public cloud in to self manage data centers. While they no doubt reduced their operating costs with that move, I couldn't help it feel that this meant that they were investing so many of their precious mental cycles, hiring cycles, maintenance cycles, into plumbing instead of user-centered innovation which was their original sweet spot. What was celebrated at the time as a great example of how cloud is a big mistake for people to me is in fact the opposite and should be used in future as a good business case study. Folks never think about the opportunity cost; they get blinded by $$$ figures which are so misleading

delfinom 6y ago
There's no reason why an org can't multitask their future plans. They more or less were forced to cut their own costs because their competitors owned the infrastructure they run on, they could never run cheaper than their competitors. Any good business leaves business roadmaps to different executives. Infrastructure doesn't need to be the primary concern of sales and product managers who should be plotting the growth of the company externally while a CTO is left to handle the "internal growth" of the company to match. Their true problem regardless is staying relevant in a market where the competitors offer better value through bundling as entire IT and cloud platforms. There's no point for businesses to use Dropbox when Microsoft provides Onedrive for Windows businesses and Google provides gdrive with gsuite. Hell for consumers, Apple and Microsoft provide seamlessly integrated storage in their operating systems. Dropbox can spend years developing their own office suite tools but they'll never be able to breach the brainshare and stability that the titans provide. There's only so many ways you can "innovate" file handling before you are flogging a dead horse or repainting a car tire for the 50th time. Dropbox's only chance was to breach heavily into cloud office suites _before_ google and microsoft jumped in full speed, which they didn't and the ship has sailed. Does it mean they can't stay alive? Well, they are floundering and playing catch up is difficult. Even Box is eating their business lunch and carving a niche because they offer a true professional business interface for IT admins to configure everything, down to legal compliance requirements. Dropbox is a fucking toy in comparison too focused on minimal hipster UIs based on a design language they originally used for consumers and have tried to force it onto business for more years than they should have.

delfinom 6y ago

There's no reason why an org can't multitask their future plans. They more or less were forced to cut their own costs because their competitors owned the infrastructure they run on, they could never run cheaper than their competitors. Any good business leaves business roadmaps to different executives. Infrastructure doesn't need to be the primary concern of sales and product managers who should be plotting the growth of the company externally while a CTO is left to handle the "internal growth" of the company to match. Their true problem regardless is staying relevant in a market where the competitors offer better value through bundling as entire IT and cloud platforms. There's no point for businesses to use Dropbox when Microsoft provides Onedrive for Windows businesses and Google provides gdrive with gsuite. Hell for consumers, Apple and Microsoft provide seamlessly integrated storage in their operating systems. Dropbox can spend years developing their own office suite tools but they'll never be able to breach the brainshare and stability that the titans provide. There's only so many ways you can "innovate" file handling before you are flogging a dead horse or repainting a car tire for the 50th time. Dropbox's only chance was to breach heavily into cloud office suites _before_ google and microsoft jumped in full speed, which they didn't and the ship has sailed. Does it mean they can't stay alive? Well, they are floundering and playing catch up is difficult. Even Box is eating their business lunch and carving a niche because they offer a true professional business interface for IT admins to configure everything, down to legal compliance requirements. Dropbox is a fucking toy in comparison too focused on minimal hipster UIs based on a design language they originally used for consumers and have tried to force it onto business for more years than they should have.