5 ms·

Nobody will win the storage war

48 points by brettcvz 14y ago

ananddass 14y ago
Also,this does not seem to be a market where small players are trying to unseat a large incumbent. Strategically, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Dropbox and Box are all in incredibly strong positions. Thus the market is unlikely to consolidate into one or two platforms for a long time. It may very well be that we see a similar pattern as we saw in evolution of PC platforms where it took decades before Mac, Windows and Linux emerged as the dominant standards. Even then, developers have had to work on cross platform compatibility for a while now.
enos_feedler 14y ago
i've always thought dropbox should play more on its strengths as a technology layer. When I think of a successful dropbox I think of all my critical applications having a logo in their startup banner saying "powered by dropbox" proudly displaying the dropbox logo. But thats where it could end. Why do I need to have a dropbox account? Why do I care about a quota? Can't the application just take care of all of that behind the scenes? All of things that make dropbox great could be built within the context of that application (sharing with other users of that application, live syncing with collaborators of that application). You could optionally sign up for a dropbox account which would just allow binding an app's dropbox-powered datastore to your global id (with permission from the app).
- jasonzemos 14y ago
  Except dropbox's technology layer isn't infrastructure. They do sync, but that's pseudoinfrastructure compared to what s3 really provides them.
barista 14y ago
People often tend to forget that storage as offered by the likes of dropbox is not a product, its just a feature that makes a product better. With deep app platform integration that iOS, Windows have brought in, there will be less and less need for people to use an external store thus making these guys irrelevant...
- tagx 14y ago
  What is Dropbox's product in your opinion then?
- ananddass 14y ago
  Would respectfully disagree. Dropbox and Box are building an awesome app platform as well and as long as users want neutral solutions (non iOS or Windows), they should be OK. In fact Box and Dropbox will start specializing as the author noted.
  - Mythbusters 14y ago
    When you say neutral solutions, you are assuming that the API developed by Apple and Microsoft can only be accessed from these platforms. I know that that's not true at least for SkyDrive API. Given these why would I choose a neutral API?
    - kijin 14y ago
      Try using any Apple product on Windows, or any Microsoft product on Linux. It might work, but it's often quite painful.
  - niels_olson 14y ago
    I definitely benefit primarily from Dropbox's neutrality. Much as I benefit from the neutrality of lastpass and xmarks. I can use them at home on the latest Mac and Linux, I can use them on personal VPS instances, I can use them at work, even in a fairly locked down network environment. iCloud is useless at work, and my officemate has switched from SkyDrive to Dropbox for the same reasons. We now both doubly benefit from the wide-ranging accessability and sharability of Dropbox.
    - barista 14y ago
      are you confusing neutrality with it being a web app? What part of the above things you could not do with say skydrive? Basically I don't see a difference between dropbox and skydrive (or gdrive or....) as a developer, if I had to choose, I'd probably choose a platform from a company that has a long history of building platforms (Microsoft or Google or any other big co) as opposed to dropbox which is a tiny startup somewhere with no viable long term life expectancy.
stcredzero 14y ago
> as Steve Jobs has proven, tight integration between components results in better user experience. A note to the younger readers out there. Talking about "tight integration" like this is fine, but some people who have heard the term "tightly coupled" apply it to the same thing. It's not the same thing. Apple's APIs and SDK are very good because they are generally NOT "tightly coupled." "Tightly coupled" generally means that it's not so great about respecting encapsulation. (Sometimes the letter of the law is upheld, but the spirit is violated.) (I like the term "tight integration" as it's the same general meaning of "tight" when people talk about bands.)
Thrymr 14y ago
Consumers will.
- rsync 14y ago
  Disagree. As we continue to travel up (down ?) the layers of abstraction from actual files in a filesystem to "pipes between dropbox and box.net[1]" it will be more and more difficult to maintain any bearing on what is yours, where it's at, and how to use it. Fast forward a few years from now when half of these players no longer exist, the other half have either been absorbed ("Dell Home Storage, powered by DropBox!") or have "pivoted" because they never made money in the first place (you know damned well that someone inside of dropbox is scheming up some "social" integration on a whiteboard). The consumer, who circa 2012 has been deemed too stupid to even understand a folder, will lose. [1] Whatever that means ...
- mey 14y ago
  Agree Increased competition for a commodity will decrease prices for the consumer.
  - duaneb 14y ago
    Or, we could end up with many different services with similar-yet-ultimately-disparate feature sets that people just give up. The consumer wins when she can use competing products together without jumping through hoops - Someone mails a word document, she saves it to Dropbox, and opens it with Pages on her iPad. We need open standards and competing implementations. It's an absolute mess right now.
    - mey 14y ago
      http://xkcd.com/927/ http://xkcd.com/927/
ljd 14y ago
Fragmentation of providers in markets can indicate that consumers see the product as a commodity. Storage is becoming more and more of a commodity. It's not a good or bad thing, it just means that storage providers might benefit by adopting strategies that work in other commodity businesses.
- zissou 14y ago
  I agree with both your premise and conclusion regarding the on going commoditization of storage. The OP lays out application integration and software integration as routes for storage providers to follow, which I tend to agree with, but the ideas can be better generalized as problems of horizontal and vertical integration (respectively). Different forms of commodity businesses exists in both the horizontal and vertical markets here, so as you point out, storage providers are likely to begin searching for customers with problems that they can build/grow into the function of their platform.
duaneb 14y ago
I just want open standards!

48 points by brettcvz 14y ago

Also,this does not seem to be a market where small players are trying to unseat a large incumbent. Strategically, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Dropbox and Box are all in incredibly strong positions. Thus the market is unlikely to consolidate into one or two platforms for a long time. It may very well be that we see a similar pattern as we saw in evolution of PC platforms where it took decades before Mac, Windows and Linux emerged as the dominant standards. Even then, developers have had to work on cross platform compatibility for a while now.

enos_feedler 14y ago

i've always thought dropbox should play more on its strengths as a technology layer. When I think of a successful dropbox I think of all my critical applications having a logo in their startup banner saying "powered by dropbox" proudly displaying the dropbox logo. But thats where it could end. Why do I need to have a dropbox account? Why do I care about a quota? Can't the application just take care of all of that behind the scenes? All of things that make dropbox great could be built within the context of that application (sharing with other users of that application, live syncing with collaborators of that application). You could optionally sign up for a dropbox account which would just allow binding an app's dropbox-powered datastore to your global id (with permission from the app).

jasonzemos 14y ago
Except dropbox's technology layer isn't infrastructure. They do sync, but that's pseudoinfrastructure compared to what s3 really provides them.

barista 14y ago

People often tend to forget that storage as offered by the likes of dropbox is not a product, its just a feature that makes a product better. With deep app platform integration that iOS, Windows have brought in, there will be less and less need for people to use an external store thus making these guys irrelevant...

tagx 14y ago
What is Dropbox's product in your opinion then?
ananddass 14y ago
Would respectfully disagree. Dropbox and Box are building an awesome app platform as well and as long as users want neutral solutions (non iOS or Windows), they should be OK. In fact Box and Dropbox will start specializing as the author noted.
- Mythbusters 14y ago
  When you say neutral solutions, you are assuming that the API developed by Apple and Microsoft can only be accessed from these platforms. I know that that's not true at least for SkyDrive API. Given these why would I choose a neutral API?
  - kijin 14y ago
    Try using any Apple product on Windows, or any Microsoft product on Linux. It might work, but it's often quite painful.
- niels_olson 14y ago
  I definitely benefit primarily from Dropbox's neutrality. Much as I benefit from the neutrality of lastpass and xmarks. I can use them at home on the latest Mac and Linux, I can use them on personal VPS instances, I can use them at work, even in a fairly locked down network environment. iCloud is useless at work, and my officemate has switched from SkyDrive to Dropbox for the same reasons. We now both doubly benefit from the wide-ranging accessability and sharability of Dropbox.
  - barista 14y ago
    are you confusing neutrality with it being a web app? What part of the above things you could not do with say skydrive? Basically I don't see a difference between dropbox and skydrive (or gdrive or....) as a developer, if I had to choose, I'd probably choose a platform from a company that has a long history of building platforms (Microsoft or Google or any other big co) as opposed to dropbox which is a tiny startup somewhere with no viable long term life expectancy.

stcredzero 14y ago

> as Steve Jobs has proven, tight integration between components results in better user experience. A note to the younger readers out there. Talking about "tight integration" like this is fine, but some people who have heard the term "tightly coupled" apply it to the same thing. It's not the same thing. Apple's APIs and SDK are very good because they are generally NOT "tightly coupled." "Tightly coupled" generally means that it's not so great about respecting encapsulation. (Sometimes the letter of the law is upheld, but the spirit is violated.) (I like the term "tight integration" as it's the same general meaning of "tight" when people talk about bands.)

Thrymr 14y ago

Consumers will.

rsync 14y ago
Disagree. As we continue to travel up (down ?) the layers of abstraction from actual files in a filesystem to "pipes between dropbox and box.net[1]" it will be more and more difficult to maintain any bearing on what is yours, where it's at, and how to use it. Fast forward a few years from now when half of these players no longer exist, the other half have either been absorbed ("Dell Home Storage, powered by DropBox!") or have "pivoted" because they never made money in the first place (you know damned well that someone inside of dropbox is scheming up some "social" integration on a whiteboard). The consumer, who circa 2012 has been deemed too stupid to even understand a folder, will lose. [1] Whatever that means ...
mey 14y ago
Agree Increased competition for a commodity will decrease prices for the consumer.
- duaneb 14y ago
  Or, we could end up with many different services with similar-yet-ultimately-disparate feature sets that people just give up. The consumer wins when she can use competing products together without jumping through hoops - Someone mails a word document, she saves it to Dropbox, and opens it with Pages on her iPad. We need open standards and competing implementations. It's an absolute mess right now.
  - mey 14y ago
    http://xkcd.com/927/ http://xkcd.com/927/

ljd 14y ago

Fragmentation of providers in markets can indicate that consumers see the product as a commodity. Storage is becoming more and more of a commodity. It's not a good or bad thing, it just means that storage providers might benefit by adopting strategies that work in other commodity businesses.

zissou 14y ago
I agree with both your premise and conclusion regarding the on going commoditization of storage. The OP lays out application integration and software integration as routes for storage providers to follow, which I tend to agree with, but the ideas can be better generalized as problems of horizontal and vertical integration (respectively). Different forms of commodity businesses exists in both the horizontal and vertical markets here, so as you point out, storage providers are likely to begin searching for customers with problems that they can build/grow into the function of their platform.

duaneb 14y ago

I just want open standards!