17 ms·

Amazon Zocalo

469 points by lowbloodsugar 12y ago

gcv 12y ago
The marketing copy doesn't mention local (or remote) filesystem integration. This doesn't look like a direct Dropbox (or Box or Google Drive) competitor to me — more like Microsoft SharePoint. Amazon does not seem to have gone for the consumer market here, nor even for small businesses. "Enterprise-ready."
_dark_matter_ 12y ago
Any word on how this compares to all of the competitors? Or is it too early to tell?
grinich 12y ago
What an awful name.
- adolfoabegg 12y ago
  true, "Amazon Docs" or even "Amazon Vault" looks better :)
- fasteddie31003 12y ago
  Maybe from this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z%C3%B3calo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z%C3%B3calo
- rdtsc 12y ago
  It just a random pronounceable 3 syllable word. Allegedly is means something in Mexico. I don't understand what is so "awful" about it? Should it be a vowel-less contraction with an .io domain name to be cool (bxr.io ?)
  - nmjohn 12y ago
    If it was a startup, the name would be fine. But it's amazon, and from a branding perspective, in terms of the cloud computing services they offer, zocalo just doesn't fit. Amazon Web Services Elastic Cloud Compute (EC2) Simple Storage Service (S3) Elastic Block Store (EBS) Relational Database Service (RDS) Amazon WorkSpaces. And then there is Zocalo. Sure, Elastic Beanstalk is less "enterprise professional" compared to the others, but the name is incredibly descriptive, they are comparing the service to a magical beanstalk that grows and grows, like with the service, your app will autoscale. Zocalo doesn't have the "enterprise professional" sound of the major services, nor the descriptive nature of the more fun named services. So while it may not be _awful_, I have no qualms in saying it is not good.
    - rdtsc 12y ago
      That makes sense. I understood it was criticized for not being hip enough but in reality the opposite is true, it is probably too hip for its market place and vis-a-vis other Amazon products.
    - eropple 12y ago
      I don't find it odd at all. Though I understand Spanish.
- hackinthebochs 12y ago
  It is in fact a very bad name. A name with unfamiliar sounds to an English ear will be that much harder to catch on and build brand recognition.
  - sk5t 12y ago
    I agree. It is suitable for a project code name... not so much for the product's brand. As a native English speaker, Zocalo makes me think of words like ziggurat, mojito, zapata, and mahalo.
  - mkempe 12y ago
    Yep. Just like Schwarzenegger.
    - hudibras 12y ago
      Or Chevrolet.
    - hackinthebochs 12y ago
      Yes, his name was an impediment to becoming a household name. It's not a complete prevention, however.
gabegottlieb 12y ago
Gotta love Amazon, at $5/user/month that is 1/3rd the price of Dropbox for business ($15/user/mo or $13.25/user/mo if you pay for the year upfront.)
- masnick 12y ago
  If anything, I hope this pressures Dropbox to lower their pricing or add a lower-priced tier. I think they're leaving money on the table with more casual users who would gladly pay $5 for a bit more space, but balk at $10/month for 100GB of space when they only need 10GB.
  - rational-future 12y ago
    One can get three Dropbox accounts upgraded to 18GB for a one time fee of $5 on fiverr.com.
- Hermel 12y ago
  Dropbox is in a challenging situation. They've grown too large for an exit and without large partner, they are fighting an uphill battle againt giants like Google, Apple and Amazon. I would not bet on them.
  - saosebastiao 12y ago
    That's what IPOs are for.
    - rational-future 12y ago
      IPO may help the founders cash out, but it won't be enough for the company to overcome heavyweight competitors like Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Apple.
      - saosebastiao 12y ago
        Yes it will. An IPO can either cash you out, or it can raise cash. In fact, once you've had your IPO, you can raise cash quite easily. Amazon could never have competed with WalMart if they had kept private.
sergiotapia 12y ago
Zocalo. I've heard that word somewhere here in Bolivia before. It's hardhat-construction related, I'm not sure if it's related to sockets or maybe a type of wrench. I think it's the little plastic you put into a hole in the wall after you drill it. It's so the screw you place in the wall is securely set and won't move. Cool name!
- fasteo 12y ago
  The white wooden part is a "Zocalo" http://img.decoesfera.com/2013/01/zocalo-madera.jpg http://img.decoesfera.com/2013/01/zocalo-madera.jpg
  - sergiotapia 12y ago
    That's the one! I knew I had heard it before. Kudos for finding it.
  - adolfoabegg 12y ago
    For me, "zócalo" in spanish, is this: https://www.google.com/search?q=skirting+board https://www.google.com/search?q=skirting+board (see the images)
  - mark212 12y ago
    baseboard or plinth. I think they were going for "something upon which the rest is built" but it comes across as meaning merely ornamental or decorative.
- bernardom 12y ago
  It's also the name of the main square in Mexico City: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z%C3%B3calo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z%C3%B3calo
  - jordigh 12y ago
    Or any main square in Mexico. Most cities in Mexico have a zócalo.
- 12y ago
ccozan 12y ago
Is this similar to OneNote from Microsoft? Or more likely to Google Drive ?
- gamegoblin 12y ago
  I think it's like Google Drive and Dropbox, but geared towards enterprise use.
  - hobofan 12y ago
    So Google Drive if you have Google Apps for Business...
    - filmgirlcw 12y ago
      No. It's like SharePoint and Box. Google Drive sync clients don't obey Active Directory policy rules the way they need to. This does. Which is huge for big businesses. This is competing with Box and with clunkier solutions from EMC. It's also competing against SharePoint Online.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
B5geek 12y ago
Zocalo? Must make Babylon5 reference: http://babylon5.wikia.com/wiki/Z%C3%B3calo http://babylon5.wikia.com/wiki/Z%C3%B3calo Or you can reference the real origin of the word: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z%C3%B3calo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z%C3%B3calo It doesn't really look like this Amazon product fits the word being used.
- techwizrd 12y ago
  Since the more literal meaning is "base" or "plinth", I guess they want Amazon Zocalo to be both the foundation and center of your document collaboration infrastructure just as the Zocalo in Mexico City once was the center for collaboration and discussion.
- probably_wrong 12y ago
  In Spanish (or, to be precise, in some Spanish-speaking countries) it means "tile", as in "floor tile". Not bad, but not impressive either.
  - Shorel 12y ago
    Zócalo means socket, socle, or baseboard, depending on the context. Socket is assumed if no context. I have never heard of it used as 'tile'. A tile is 'baldoza'.
- stephenhess 12y ago
  Zocalo is also a large, historical square in Mexico City. That reference makes a bit more sense to me.
dragonwriter 12y ago
So, is the intended reference in the name to a baseboard or the main square of a town?
eob 12y ago
I wonder how long it's going to be before Dropbox announces another vertical. They have an amazing product, but it's basically been unchanged for years now and been allowed to succeed (and thrive!) as such because competitors have always treated their own Dropbox-style clients as a hobby instead of a product.
- bjt 12y ago
  Another vertical like http://www.mailboxapp.com/ http://www.mailboxapp.com/ ?
- jonmc12 12y ago
  I've been impressed with Dropbox Datastore (https://www.dropbox.com/developers/datastore https://www.dropbox.com/developers/datastore)
- MichaelApproved 12y ago
  I disagree that the product has been unchanged for years. Their app syncs photos on my phone, the shared link gives a great preview of files (esp videos), they've got a strong API for developers and they're improving picture sharing. These may seem like little changes to one product but they're making it a rock solid product in one vertical that is slowly creeping out into others.
  - comex 12y ago
    Okay, it's fairly off-topic, but after reading that I had to respond. I consider the shared link a serious anti-feature compared to the old direct link, I suppose due to poor engineering. - For pictures: There is no way to see the full resolution without clicking the download link. Fine for photos, no good for the screenshots I like to upload. - For PDFs: uses pdf.js. That would be nice if I were still using Adobe Reader, not so much in Safari where I have a superior reader built in.
- Perceptes 12y ago
  They also released Carousel not long ago: https://www.carousel.com/ https://www.carousel.com/
callumprentice 12y ago
ISTR Zocalo is Mexican Spanish for main square or plaza. Guess there is some logic in that.
- omaranto 12y ago
  ISTR?
  - esoltys 12y ago
    "I Seem To Recall"
HorizonXP 12y ago
Looks like for years, we've been saying that Amazon will likely try and compete with Dropbox and Box. Looks like that time has come. Having used Dropbox for personal stuff, and Box for work stuff, I have to say, neither has completely fit my needs. Sure, Dropbox is great for working within small groups/teams, and for personal syncing. Sometimes the sharing functionality gets a bit wonky, but definitely the best implementation by far. Box works decently well in the work environment, but it is definitely clunkier than Dropbox in a lot of respects. No one liked using Box where I worked (FB). On my own, I've found that the most of my clients don't use any of these. In fact, they still try to run things on FTP sites! As a result, I've had to adapt to them and use Citrix ShareFile. It actually serves a different purpose than Dropbox or Box. It's a drop-in replacement for sending/receiving files to people within and outside your organization. I can silo off folders to specific users, companies, etc. I can send a link to folks asking them to upload files to me. It's definitely fit the bill in a lot of respects. So internally, I still use Dropbox. But I don't expose that externally to my clients. It seems that Amazon Zocalo is trying to compete with Google Drive, by allowing you to edit files in the browser, and integrate with your existing IT infrastructure. Not a bad tactic, but I think the service that will do really well in enterprise is one that merges the functionality of ShareFile into Dropbox, with IT integration.
- sergiotapia 12y ago
  I -hated- my time with Box. It was extremely confusing to use and terrible to find things once I closed the tab and returned. I remember always feeling lost.
  - colmvp 12y ago
    You're not the only one. I know so many people who are forced to use Box at notable tech companies in SF and absolutely hated it compared to using Dropbox.
- ihnorton 12y ago
  > I think the service that will do really well in enterprise is one that merges the functionality of ShareFile into Dropbox, with IT integration. EMC Syncplicity is targeting that usecase (no idea how well it works, yet).
jakozaur 12y ago
Looks like everyone is pushing on enterprise cloud storage. After Google/Microsoft price slash and Amazon entering that market I wonder what would happen to Box IPO. Looks like this market will commoditized and be yet another race to bottom.
alrs 12y ago
It's discouraging that Amazon is able to keep moving forward with such predictable momentum while the management teams of its competitors still haven't figured out how to take on Amazon circa 2008.
- opendais 12y ago
  It is no different than Google in that respect. Tbh, I think Google has more market share for its core products relatively speaking. That is one of the things that makes tech interesting, you can win really, really big in one area then roll it into other related areas.
CHsurfer 12y ago
It sounds like a Sharepoint killer.
- xur17 12y ago
  Except you can't host it yourself.
  - spacefight 12y ago
    Exactly. And that you can't trust a company who wants to do business with the CIA. I know I'm getting downvoted for this - thanks guys ;)
    - mattdeboard 12y ago
      Yeah distrusting the CIA & NSA is a real counter-cultural thing here at Hacker News. You're more likely getting downvoted for talking about getting downvoted.
    - penguindev 12y ago
      As if the hardware / software stack you'd 'host it yourself on' is secure?
      - tormeh 12y ago
        This needs more attention. Can we even trust OpenBSD, much less Linux? There's so much code in there. How could we possibly know that they're safe? That packets aren't a little bigger than they need to be? We'll just have to live with it I guess.
      - spacefight 12y ago
        Hard to tell. It's for sure easier to compromise/court slapp a few rather large coorporations than to penetrate thousands or millions of self-hosted instances.
bjliu 12y ago
This is basically Google Drive...
- prezjordan 12y ago
  Huh, I forgot no one else is allowed to make a Google Drive competitor. That's pretty convenient for Google.
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    The observation that this is similar to Drive doesn't imply that it is not-allowed for that reason. It does seem to imply that the commenter found it not-interesting because it doesn't seem (to the commenter) to offer anything new, but not-interesting is not the same as not-allowed.
- gmbh_solo 12y ago
  Cloud drive (http://clouddrive.amazon.com http://clouddrive.amazon.com) is google drive. Zocalo (https://home.awsapps.net https://home.awsapps.net) is google docs without editing.
ifup 12y ago
This makes it much more likely that competitors that rely on amazon services will need to build the entire storage stack in order to compete with Amazon. Hopefully this leads to more great oss solutions for building things like s3.
peterb 12y ago
Jeff Bezos is using Bill Gates' playbook from the 1990's: build alternatives to the most popular apps on your platform; bundle them; and improve app quality over time. This business strategy is very hard for a company like dropbox to compete against, even if they have better IP/quality/features. Edit: we can also expect Amazon versions of "knife the baby", "cut off their air supply" and "DOS ain't done until Lotus won't run".
- driedtoast 12y ago
  I agree, this might cut into more of box.net's offering than dropbox though.
  - rufugee 12y ago
    Afaik, it's not competitively priced for large volume. We priced around 650 users for box, and it came out to be roughly $8K annually. At $5/month/user, the Amazon offering would be roughly $40K annually. I'd actually prefer to go the Amazon route, but they're going to have to offer volume discounts to make it compelling.
    - MichaelApproved 12y ago
      If you have 650 users (who I'm assuming are paid employees), doesn't the cost become marginal in comparison to improved productivity? I would guess the time to re-train all 650 on a new platform and the ease of transferring existing files would be more meaningful than the price difference.
    - ranvir 12y ago
      $8k annually for 650 users is about $1 per month per user vs a $15 list price. Is that right?
      - rufugee 12y ago
        I'm actually waiting for clarification on this...I think my team might've misinterpreted the quote, and if so, Amazon would be significantly cheaper. I'll update as soon as I know (most likely Monday).
yalogin 12y ago
This is what I was waiting to happen ever since Dropbox became popular. I always said Dropbox is a good idea but its not a long term business. Remains to be seen how they fare.
- Synroc 12y ago
  In your opinion, what would Dropbox need to do to become a long term business?
magic5227 12y ago
Terrible name... Also it looks like Box and Google Drive are significantly cheaper.
- elwell 12y ago
  I agree, the name sounds foreign and it also will be pronounced different ways.
  - jvagner 12y ago
    It IS foreign. A famous, foreign place. And it's Spanish, not exactly unfamiliar to much of the planet. If you're familiar/know the place, it makes sense why they named it that.
    - elwell 12y ago
      I think foreign-sounding names (e.g., Orkut) are usually a poor choice. Just my opinion/intuition though.
    - lifeformed 12y ago
      I don't think he's saying foreign = bad, just that foreign = harder to market to a largely English-speaking audience.
  - Shorel 12y ago
    It's the spanish word that means 'socket'.
- rjsamson 12y ago
  How is Box significantly cheaper? Box is $5 / seat for 100GB, with a cap of 10 users at that tier - if you want more than 10 users in an organization you have to buy in at the $15 / seat price point. Zocalo's $5 / seat for 200GB is a pretty good value in the enterprise space.
  - magic5227 12y ago
thawkins 12y ago
No linux client, shame
- rsync 12y ago
  Is there not an android client ? Just curious...
jliptzin 12y ago
Dropbox is in a tough situation because they're charging 5x as much as competitors for roughly the same service (I'm comparing the monthly 100gb plan), yet they can't lower the price because they likely have a massive number of customers who are fine with paying $10 / month and/or don't know about cheaper competitors...so the price will likely stay put until they start to see signs of their existing base churning out, but by then their competitors may already have won over a lot of mindshare.
- coldtea 12y ago
  >Dropbox is in a tough situation because they're charging 5x as much as competitors for roughly the same service Care to name some of the competitors? Besides Google Drive, I mean, which I won't use (tried it, and it was crap compared to Amazon, but am trying to avoid Google in general, and I don't want to encourage their bundling of Google Apps with the Drive).
  - jliptzin 12y ago
    Google Drive, OneDrive, and now it looks like amazon is throwing their hat into the ring. These are all cheaper options. I switched to google drive from dropbox without a problem.
    - acomjean 12y ago
      box.com and mega are also working in the same space to some extent. If you have the time installing the open-source, self hosted owncloud probably would be cheaper.
  - dublinben 12y ago
    OVH's hubiC service is only €1/mo for 100 GB. Their servers are all physically located in France, for what it's worth.
  - marincounty 12y ago
    It's too bad Google irritated so many customers. I try to avoid Google, but find it hard.
hatred 12y ago
It amazes me to find the number of competitors who use AWS as a platform while competing with Amazon. Certainly tells something about customer service at Amazon.
- filmgirlcw 12y ago
  You could say the same for Microsoft though. Or Oracle. Or SAP. I mean, iCloud runs on Azure so...
  - gamegoblin 12y ago
    Is it confirmed that iCloud runs on Azure, or just rumor?
    - prvcy 12y ago
      You can confirm it yourself. Look at the outgoing connections while using say Messages on OS X, they are going to azure domains.
      - gamegoblin 12y ago
        Huh. I can't check it myself, but I'm surprised Apple doesn't route it through some Apple owned domain to mask their underlying service.
      - aridiculous 12y ago
        I just tried. It goes to an IP that resolves to Apple with WHOIS.
        deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
    - dunham 12y ago
      It's confirmed, Apple's Feb14 security whitepaper states: "The encrypted chunks of the file are stored, without any user-identifying information, using third-party storage services, such as Amazon S3 and Windows Azure." But, as far as I know, they don't use Azure/Amazon for any non-storage functionality.
malchow 12y ago
Is it Alan Rickman narrating the introductory video? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbjMrQtoZlU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbjMrQtoZlU That would be one hell of an easter egg.
- ddispaltro 12y ago
  It is not, that guy has probably one of the most distinct voices, and that is not him. Would have been great though.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
filmgirlcw 12y ago
This is a move against SharePoint Online/Box/EMC's shitty thing. The proof will be how well it works. Box can work well enough if you've got everyone on it and you're using it as your main file server. The problem is that if you want to use it with users who expect it to work like Dropbox, it's not really designed for that kind of nimble access. The pricing is totally inline with the competitors on a per-seat basis. It's even cheaper if you have any of the think client instances. Interesting to see how it plays out -- and what impact this will have on Box, now that it is delaying its IPO.
- newman314 12y ago
  More details as to why you don't like EMC's offering please?
  - filmgirlcw 12y ago
    So I should have clarified, my experience is not with Syncolicity but with Documentum. Syncolicity might be great. Documentum, however, is/was just god awful.
- thejdude 12y ago
  Please please please let companies use this instead of SharePoint. Anything sane. Ah well, probably the kind of people who make "enterprise" buying decisions will not even SEE Zocalo on their perception radar, so it will never happen.
  - gregd 12y ago
    I make enterprise buying decisions and it is on my radar. But then again, I frequent HN so there's that...
auvi 12y ago
I am wondering what Aaron Levie will think of this.
zefi 12y ago
This product looks great. I run Kivo (www.kivo.com YC S13) we're trying to address a lot of the same problems around sharing and storage that Dropbox et al have missed out on. Zocalo seems like a really good first pass, but I don't think tying users to a specific storage platform is the winning strategy for something that's fundamentally a collaboration app. It shouldn't matter where someone stores their files, collaboration applications should exist as layers on top of existing content. Forcing users to move to a new platform is one more point of friction when it comes to adoption. Storage companies releasing collaboration products is like email providers only letting their users email other users of their service - Gmail to Gmail email product. The reason why email works as a communication protocol is because it is an open one. Content collaboration is the same, the company that will win this market will be the one that addresses it without letting the politics of the 'storage wars' poison its simplicity. The 'it just works' of Dropbox comes from its ability to store and sync any file without any change in user behaviour - it's just another folder. No one's created an 'it just works' product for collaboration yet, where it doesn't matter whereabouts your files are stored or who it is that you want to work with. That's what we're trying to do at Kivo, and we'll be announcing a set of integrations very soon to make that so. If you'd like to help, get in touch, my email's in my hn profile.
- fred_durst 12y ago
  I like your clever use of "looks great" and then a subtle dig with "seems like a really good first pass" and then sneaking in some weaknesses before explaining why the strengths of your platform are better. Then bookending a second branding mention of "Kivo" to wrap things up.
  - zefi 12y ago
    I think it does look great. This is a really hard problem to solve and they've done an excellent job. I'm sorry if you feel otherwise.
    - fred_durst 12y ago
      No, I think you did a great job of appearing really positive. That style is all the rage these days and it looks like you have a great grasp of it. Keep up the great work!
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
lingben 12y ago
sorry if this has already been mentioned but does zocalo have client side encryption? that is to say, does the file get encrypted before being sent? this part mentions encryption but is isn't clear: "All documents are stored in a designated AWS Region and transmitted in encrypted form."
- mkal_tsr 12y ago
  I keep looking for that and I haven't found any copy that supports the notion they have client-side encryption, so it's a non-starter for me :-(
- borplk 12y ago
  I don't think it does. A lot of the features would not work without them being able to read the file. They may offer it as a "checkbox" (I'd say unlikely). But certainly it would never be 100% client-side encrypted.
JonLim 12y ago
Forgive my ignorance, but would something like this be decent for slinging around video/media files? Been investigating storage VPS solutions for doing so, but I wonder if this would be a more elegant solution.
edpichler 12y ago
Just a curious comment: Dropbox uses Amazon S3. I really like Dropbox, an state of art product and I'm also a great fan of Bezos company and his strategies, but I currently feel very satisfied with Dropbox, everything works very well.
markhahn 12y ago
Perfectly clean of any Linux taint - is this a message?
rsync 12y ago
What is the interface between the front end UI (file sharing, commenting, etc.) and the back end storage ? That is, can I manipulate the back end via s3 and s3 tools ?
Thiz 12y ago
Zocalo is a stupid name. It really is. No matter how much you thought about it, how many nights of brainstorming with your pillow smelling like señoritas, or perhaps drinking margaritas at a pub in the zocalo. It is stupid. Please say this is a 'beta' and it will be renamed to Amazon cloud, drive, square, plaza, or whatever but drop it, just drop it.
- trevmckendrick 12y ago
  I lived in Mexico for 2 years. Zocalo was used to refer to "downtown" or to the public square. It's where everything is, and where you go when you need to get something. I think it's a great name.
  - Thiz 12y ago
    I know what zocalo is, I am a damn latino too, been there a couple of times, still that doesn't make it a nice name. It sucks, but whatev.
- Shorel 12y ago
  As a latino, I don't want to hear someone saying 'tzacallow'
jonah 12y ago
There's also Zócalo Public Square[0], a "not-for-profit Ideas Exchange that blends live events and humanities journalism." [0] http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/ http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/
gcb0 12y ago
i cringe that they allow to use existing amazon accounts on this.
- voltagex_ 12y ago
  Why?
  - gcb0 12y ago
    because zero owners of regular amazon accounts are for corporate use. so far they only tied the accounts with cloud services, where the audience is clever enough to not use their home amazon accounts at. and instead create one with their employer email. now with this office suit, everyone will just login with their home account. just like they do with corporate google docs. well, google is a bad example because then they made everything worse by joining personal and domain (which often meant employee at small company) into a single account.
CommitPull 12y ago
Cool stuff, is this Amazon's answer to Google Drive and Dropbox?
dendory 12y ago
I fully expect version 2 will have full document editing, competing directly with GDrive and Office 365.
mercurialshark 12y ago
Why'd they go with a British accent?
joeblau 12y ago
> # What might go wrong? (This is a test of imagination, not confidence.) > Google might finally unleash GDrive and steal a lot of Dropbox's thunder > (especially if this takes place before launch.) In general, the online > storage space is extremely noisy, so being marginally better isn't good > enough; there has to be a leap in value worthy of writing/blogging/telling > friends about...[1] This was from Drew's YC dropbox application. It looks like it should have said "Amazon, Google, Apple, and Microsoft would all unleash their cloud platforms at lower price points with software services sitting on top." Drew does have a very valid point: Being marginally better isn't good enough. I love Dropbox's service and I want them to win, but this pricing war is not great news for them. [1] - https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/27532820/app.html https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/27532820/app.html
anotherevan 12y ago
Does anyone have experience with Egnyte? https://www.egnyte.com/ https://www.egnyte.com/ The thing that makes it attractive to me is that it can sync with a Netgear NAS. About half our staff are in a central office, the other half are remote, so this is a solution that looks like it would cater well to that situation.
frozenport 12y ago
How do you pronounce this?
mark_l_watson 12y ago
I have mixed feelings about this. I dumped iTunes for Amazon's music store - works really well on iPad, Android phones, and my laptop. Apple lost me when my curated iTunes library was not available on my droid. Really like the Amazon player clients. Zocalo looks good for one account for pictures and videos shared by my extended family with permissions, and still keep my work stuff separate. Where Dropbox really wins though: smooth integration with so many other services. I can, for example, edit my leanpub manuscripts on my laptop, surprisingly well also on my iPad, and actually OK on my droid phone. Same for many other apps that use the Dropbox APIs. What will probably keep me on Dropbox forever is that $100/year seems really inexpensive for a service that I use a lot, and it would take too much of my time to switch.
- gregd 12y ago
  and it would take too much of my time to switch. Yeah, that drag & drop can sure be a pain in the ass... :)
Hengjie 12y ago
It'd be interesting to see if their annotation allows for exporting to their original documents. It's similar to what http://www.notablepdf.com http://www.notablepdf.com did but only for PDF documents. Their export functionality for MS Word is quite interesting, and would actually work extremely well for lawyers who constantly use tracked changes.
wkd415 12y ago
Conflicted copies? I don't understand how that is never mentioned when talking about collaborating on documents. Comments are worthless without track changes. Someone make word obsolete by making track changes better.
- thejdude 12y ago
  If all editing is done in the cloud, I don't see any problems. MS Word isn't designed for collaborative editing. That, or use something like markdown + version control.
grigy 12y ago
Isn't this a reason to not use AWS anymore?
gomesnayagam 12y ago
my startup (http://tataatsu.com http://tataatsu.com ) launched similar ditto amazon zocalo 1 year back, http://collablayer.com/ http://collablayer.com/ :(
jorangreef 12y ago
The company that does best in this market will be the company that exists to service its customers, not the company that exists to compete with others.
gautamjeyaraman 12y ago
We built and launched exactly the same app one year back at http://collablayer.com http://collablayer.com
- gmbh_solo 12y ago
  How does collablayer synchronize collaboration? Zocalo instance does not synchronize in real time. Average 30 seconds per change. Larger documents time goes way up. Using api from angular js front end to put and get documents from s3 wait for pdfs from aspose service 30 seconds Word and 60 seconds xcel. Changes in cloud drive folder take 20 seconds more.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]

469 points by lowbloodsugar 12y ago

gcv 12y ago

The marketing copy doesn't mention local (or remote) filesystem integration. This doesn't look like a direct Dropbox (or Box or Google Drive) competitor to me — more like Microsoft SharePoint. Amazon does not seem to have gone for the consumer market here, nor even for small businesses. "Enterprise-ready."

_dark_matter_ 12y ago

Any word on how this compares to all of the competitors? Or is it too early to tell?

grinich 12y ago

What an awful name.

adolfoabegg 12y ago
true, "Amazon Docs" or even "Amazon Vault" looks better :)
fasteddie31003 12y ago
Maybe from this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z%C3%B3calo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z%C3%B3calo
rdtsc 12y ago
It just a random pronounceable 3 syllable word. Allegedly is means something in Mexico. I don't understand what is so "awful" about it? Should it be a vowel-less contraction with an .io domain name to be cool (bxr.io ?)
- nmjohn 12y ago
  If it was a startup, the name would be fine. But it's amazon, and from a branding perspective, in terms of the cloud computing services they offer, zocalo just doesn't fit. Amazon Web Services Elastic Cloud Compute (EC2) Simple Storage Service (S3) Elastic Block Store (EBS) Relational Database Service (RDS) Amazon WorkSpaces. And then there is Zocalo. Sure, Elastic Beanstalk is less "enterprise professional" compared to the others, but the name is incredibly descriptive, they are comparing the service to a magical beanstalk that grows and grows, like with the service, your app will autoscale. Zocalo doesn't have the "enterprise professional" sound of the major services, nor the descriptive nature of the more fun named services. So while it may not be _awful_, I have no qualms in saying it is not good.
  - rdtsc 12y ago
    That makes sense. I understood it was criticized for not being hip enough but in reality the opposite is true, it is probably too hip for its market place and vis-a-vis other Amazon products.
  - eropple 12y ago
    I don't find it odd at all. Though I understand Spanish.
hackinthebochs 12y ago
It is in fact a very bad name. A name with unfamiliar sounds to an English ear will be that much harder to catch on and build brand recognition.
- sk5t 12y ago
  I agree. It is suitable for a project code name... not so much for the product's brand. As a native English speaker, Zocalo makes me think of words like ziggurat, mojito, zapata, and mahalo.
- mkempe 12y ago
  Yep. Just like Schwarzenegger.
  - hudibras 12y ago
    Or Chevrolet.
  - hackinthebochs 12y ago
    Yes, his name was an impediment to becoming a household name. It's not a complete prevention, however.

gabegottlieb 12y ago

Gotta love Amazon, at $5/user/month that is 1/3rd the price of Dropbox for business ($15/user/mo or $13.25/user/mo if you pay for the year upfront.)

masnick 12y ago
If anything, I hope this pressures Dropbox to lower their pricing or add a lower-priced tier. I think they're leaving money on the table with more casual users who would gladly pay $5 for a bit more space, but balk at $10/month for 100GB of space when they only need 10GB.
- rational-future 12y ago
  One can get three Dropbox accounts upgraded to 18GB for a one time fee of $5 on fiverr.com.
Hermel 12y ago
Dropbox is in a challenging situation. They've grown too large for an exit and without large partner, they are fighting an uphill battle againt giants like Google, Apple and Amazon. I would not bet on them.
- saosebastiao 12y ago
  That's what IPOs are for.
  - rational-future 12y ago
    IPO may help the founders cash out, but it won't be enough for the company to overcome heavyweight competitors like Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Apple.
    - saosebastiao 12y ago
      Yes it will. An IPO can either cash you out, or it can raise cash. In fact, once you've had your IPO, you can raise cash quite easily. Amazon could never have competed with WalMart if they had kept private.

sergiotapia 12y ago

Zocalo. I've heard that word somewhere here in Bolivia before. It's hardhat-construction related, I'm not sure if it's related to sockets or maybe a type of wrench. I think it's the little plastic you put into a hole in the wall after you drill it. It's so the screw you place in the wall is securely set and won't move. Cool name!

fasteo 12y ago
The white wooden part is a "Zocalo" http://img.decoesfera.com/2013/01/zocalo-madera.jpg http://img.decoesfera.com/2013/01/zocalo-madera.jpg
- sergiotapia 12y ago
  That's the one! I knew I had heard it before. Kudos for finding it.
- adolfoabegg 12y ago
  For me, "zócalo" in spanish, is this: https://www.google.com/search?q=skirting+board https://www.google.com/search?q=skirting+board (see the images)
- mark212 12y ago
  baseboard or plinth. I think they were going for "something upon which the rest is built" but it comes across as meaning merely ornamental or decorative.
bernardom 12y ago
It's also the name of the main square in Mexico City: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z%C3%B3calo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z%C3%B3calo
- jordigh 12y ago
  Or any main square in Mexico. Most cities in Mexico have a zócalo.
12y ago

ccozan 12y ago

Is this similar to OneNote from Microsoft? Or more likely to Google Drive ?

gamegoblin 12y ago
I think it's like Google Drive and Dropbox, but geared towards enterprise use.
- hobofan 12y ago
  So Google Drive if you have Google Apps for Business...
  - filmgirlcw 12y ago
    No. It's like SharePoint and Box. Google Drive sync clients don't obey Active Directory policy rules the way they need to. This does. Which is huge for big businesses. This is competing with Box and with clunkier solutions from EMC. It's also competing against SharePoint Online.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

B5geek 12y ago

Zocalo? Must make Babylon5 reference: http://babylon5.wikia.com/wiki/Z%C3%B3calo http://babylon5.wikia.com/wiki/Z%C3%B3calo Or you can reference the real origin of the word: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z%C3%B3calo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z%C3%B3calo It doesn't really look like this Amazon product fits the word being used.

techwizrd 12y ago
Since the more literal meaning is "base" or "plinth", I guess they want Amazon Zocalo to be both the foundation and center of your document collaboration infrastructure just as the Zocalo in Mexico City once was the center for collaboration and discussion.
probably_wrong 12y ago
In Spanish (or, to be precise, in some Spanish-speaking countries) it means "tile", as in "floor tile". Not bad, but not impressive either.
- Shorel 12y ago
  Zócalo means socket, socle, or baseboard, depending on the context. Socket is assumed if no context. I have never heard of it used as 'tile'. A tile is 'baldoza'.
stephenhess 12y ago
Zocalo is also a large, historical square in Mexico City. That reference makes a bit more sense to me.

dragonwriter 12y ago

So, is the intended reference in the name to a baseboard or the main square of a town?

eob 12y ago

I wonder how long it's going to be before Dropbox announces another vertical. They have an amazing product, but it's basically been unchanged for years now and been allowed to succeed (and thrive!) as such because competitors have always treated their own Dropbox-style clients as a hobby instead of a product.

bjt 12y ago
Another vertical like http://www.mailboxapp.com/ http://www.mailboxapp.com/ ?
jonmc12 12y ago
I've been impressed with Dropbox Datastore (https://www.dropbox.com/developers/datastore https://www.dropbox.com/developers/datastore)
MichaelApproved 12y ago
I disagree that the product has been unchanged for years. Their app syncs photos on my phone, the shared link gives a great preview of files (esp videos), they've got a strong API for developers and they're improving picture sharing. These may seem like little changes to one product but they're making it a rock solid product in one vertical that is slowly creeping out into others.
- comex 12y ago
  Okay, it's fairly off-topic, but after reading that I had to respond. I consider the shared link a serious anti-feature compared to the old direct link, I suppose due to poor engineering. - For pictures: There is no way to see the full resolution without clicking the download link. Fine for photos, no good for the screenshots I like to upload. - For PDFs: uses pdf.js. That would be nice if I were still using Adobe Reader, not so much in Safari where I have a superior reader built in.
Perceptes 12y ago
They also released Carousel not long ago: https://www.carousel.com/ https://www.carousel.com/

callumprentice 12y ago

ISTR Zocalo is Mexican Spanish for main square or plaza. Guess there is some logic in that.

omaranto 12y ago
ISTR?
- esoltys 12y ago
  "I Seem To Recall"

HorizonXP 12y ago

Looks like for years, we've been saying that Amazon will likely try and compete with Dropbox and Box. Looks like that time has come. Having used Dropbox for personal stuff, and Box for work stuff, I have to say, neither has completely fit my needs. Sure, Dropbox is great for working within small groups/teams, and for personal syncing. Sometimes the sharing functionality gets a bit wonky, but definitely the best implementation by far. Box works decently well in the work environment, but it is definitely clunkier than Dropbox in a lot of respects. No one liked using Box where I worked (FB). On my own, I've found that the most of my clients don't use any of these. In fact, they still try to run things on FTP sites! As a result, I've had to adapt to them and use Citrix ShareFile. It actually serves a different purpose than Dropbox or Box. It's a drop-in replacement for sending/receiving files to people within and outside your organization. I can silo off folders to specific users, companies, etc. I can send a link to folks asking them to upload files to me. It's definitely fit the bill in a lot of respects. So internally, I still use Dropbox. But I don't expose that externally to my clients. It seems that Amazon Zocalo is trying to compete with Google Drive, by allowing you to edit files in the browser, and integrate with your existing IT infrastructure. Not a bad tactic, but I think the service that will do really well in enterprise is one that merges the functionality of ShareFile into Dropbox, with IT integration.

sergiotapia 12y ago
I -hated- my time with Box. It was extremely confusing to use and terrible to find things once I closed the tab and returned. I remember always feeling lost.
- colmvp 12y ago
  You're not the only one. I know so many people who are forced to use Box at notable tech companies in SF and absolutely hated it compared to using Dropbox.
ihnorton 12y ago
> I think the service that will do really well in enterprise is one that merges the functionality of ShareFile into Dropbox, with IT integration. EMC Syncplicity is targeting that usecase (no idea how well it works, yet).

jakozaur 12y ago

Looks like everyone is pushing on enterprise cloud storage. After Google/Microsoft price slash and Amazon entering that market I wonder what would happen to Box IPO. Looks like this market will commoditized and be yet another race to bottom.

alrs 12y ago

It's discouraging that Amazon is able to keep moving forward with such predictable momentum while the management teams of its competitors still haven't figured out how to take on Amazon circa 2008.

opendais 12y ago
It is no different than Google in that respect. Tbh, I think Google has more market share for its core products relatively speaking. That is one of the things that makes tech interesting, you can win really, really big in one area then roll it into other related areas.

CHsurfer 12y ago

It sounds like a Sharepoint killer.

xur17 12y ago
Except you can't host it yourself.
- spacefight 12y ago
  Exactly. And that you can't trust a company who wants to do business with the CIA. I know I'm getting downvoted for this - thanks guys ;)
  - mattdeboard 12y ago
    Yeah distrusting the CIA & NSA is a real counter-cultural thing here at Hacker News. You're more likely getting downvoted for talking about getting downvoted.
  - penguindev 12y ago
    As if the hardware / software stack you'd 'host it yourself on' is secure?
    - tormeh 12y ago
      This needs more attention. Can we even trust OpenBSD, much less Linux? There's so much code in there. How could we possibly know that they're safe? That packets aren't a little bigger than they need to be? We'll just have to live with it I guess.
    - spacefight 12y ago
      Hard to tell. It's for sure easier to compromise/court slapp a few rather large coorporations than to penetrate thousands or millions of self-hosted instances.

bjliu 12y ago

This is basically Google Drive...

prezjordan 12y ago
Huh, I forgot no one else is allowed to make a Google Drive competitor. That's pretty convenient for Google.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  The observation that this is similar to Drive doesn't imply that it is not-allowed for that reason. It does seem to imply that the commenter found it not-interesting because it doesn't seem (to the commenter) to offer anything new, but not-interesting is not the same as not-allowed.
gmbh_solo 12y ago
Cloud drive (http://clouddrive.amazon.com http://clouddrive.amazon.com) is google drive. Zocalo (https://home.awsapps.net https://home.awsapps.net) is google docs without editing.

ifup 12y ago

This makes it much more likely that competitors that rely on amazon services will need to build the entire storage stack in order to compete with Amazon. Hopefully this leads to more great oss solutions for building things like s3.

peterb 12y ago

Jeff Bezos is using Bill Gates' playbook from the 1990's: build alternatives to the most popular apps on your platform; bundle them; and improve app quality over time. This business strategy is very hard for a company like dropbox to compete against, even if they have better IP/quality/features. Edit: we can also expect Amazon versions of "knife the baby", "cut off their air supply" and "DOS ain't done until Lotus won't run".

driedtoast 12y ago
I agree, this might cut into more of box.net's offering than dropbox though.
- rufugee 12y ago
  Afaik, it's not competitively priced for large volume. We priced around 650 users for box, and it came out to be roughly $8K annually. At $5/month/user, the Amazon offering would be roughly $40K annually. I'd actually prefer to go the Amazon route, but they're going to have to offer volume discounts to make it compelling.
  - MichaelApproved 12y ago
    If you have 650 users (who I'm assuming are paid employees), doesn't the cost become marginal in comparison to improved productivity? I would guess the time to re-train all 650 on a new platform and the ease of transferring existing files would be more meaningful than the price difference.
  - ranvir 12y ago
    $8k annually for 650 users is about $1 per month per user vs a $15 list price. Is that right?
    - rufugee 12y ago
      I'm actually waiting for clarification on this...I think my team might've misinterpreted the quote, and if so, Amazon would be significantly cheaper. I'll update as soon as I know (most likely Monday).

yalogin 12y ago

This is what I was waiting to happen ever since Dropbox became popular. I always said Dropbox is a good idea but its not a long term business. Remains to be seen how they fare.

Synroc 12y ago
In your opinion, what would Dropbox need to do to become a long term business?

magic5227 12y ago

Terrible name... Also it looks like Box and Google Drive are significantly cheaper.

elwell 12y ago
I agree, the name sounds foreign and it also will be pronounced different ways.
- jvagner 12y ago
  It IS foreign. A famous, foreign place. And it's Spanish, not exactly unfamiliar to much of the planet. If you're familiar/know the place, it makes sense why they named it that.
  - elwell 12y ago
    I think foreign-sounding names (e.g., Orkut) are usually a poor choice. Just my opinion/intuition though.
  - lifeformed 12y ago
    I don't think he's saying foreign = bad, just that foreign = harder to market to a largely English-speaking audience.
- Shorel 12y ago
  It's the spanish word that means 'socket'.
rjsamson 12y ago
How is Box significantly cheaper? Box is $5 / seat for 100GB, with a cap of 10 users at that tier - if you want more than 10 users in an organization you have to buy in at the $15 / seat price point. Zocalo's $5 / seat for 200GB is a pretty good value in the enterprise space.
- magic5227 12y ago

thawkins 12y ago

No linux client, shame

rsync 12y ago
Is there not an android client ? Just curious...

jliptzin 12y ago

Dropbox is in a tough situation because they're charging 5x as much as competitors for roughly the same service (I'm comparing the monthly 100gb plan), yet they can't lower the price because they likely have a massive number of customers who are fine with paying $10 / month and/or don't know about cheaper competitors...so the price will likely stay put until they start to see signs of their existing base churning out, but by then their competitors may already have won over a lot of mindshare.

coldtea 12y ago
>Dropbox is in a tough situation because they're charging 5x as much as competitors for roughly the same service Care to name some of the competitors? Besides Google Drive, I mean, which I won't use (tried it, and it was crap compared to Amazon, but am trying to avoid Google in general, and I don't want to encourage their bundling of Google Apps with the Drive).
- jliptzin 12y ago
  Google Drive, OneDrive, and now it looks like amazon is throwing their hat into the ring. These are all cheaper options. I switched to google drive from dropbox without a problem.
  - acomjean 12y ago
    box.com and mega are also working in the same space to some extent. If you have the time installing the open-source, self hosted owncloud probably would be cheaper.
- dublinben 12y ago
  OVH's hubiC service is only €1/mo for 100 GB. Their servers are all physically located in France, for what it's worth.
- marincounty 12y ago
  It's too bad Google irritated so many customers. I try to avoid Google, but find it hard.

hatred 12y ago

It amazes me to find the number of competitors who use AWS as a platform while competing with Amazon. Certainly tells something about customer service at Amazon.

filmgirlcw 12y ago
You could say the same for Microsoft though. Or Oracle. Or SAP. I mean, iCloud runs on Azure so...
- gamegoblin 12y ago
  Is it confirmed that iCloud runs on Azure, or just rumor?
  - prvcy 12y ago
    You can confirm it yourself. Look at the outgoing connections while using say Messages on OS X, they are going to azure domains.
    - gamegoblin 12y ago
      Huh. I can't check it myself, but I'm surprised Apple doesn't route it through some Apple owned domain to mask their underlying service.
    - aridiculous 12y ago
      I just tried. It goes to an IP that resolves to Apple with WHOIS.
      - deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
  - dunham 12y ago
    It's confirmed, Apple's Feb14 security whitepaper states: "The encrypted chunks of the file are stored, without any user-identifying information, using third-party storage services, such as Amazon S3 and Windows Azure." But, as far as I know, they don't use Azure/Amazon for any non-storage functionality.

malchow 12y ago

Is it Alan Rickman narrating the introductory video? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbjMrQtoZlU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbjMrQtoZlU That would be one hell of an easter egg.

ddispaltro 12y ago
It is not, that guy has probably one of the most distinct voices, and that is not him. Would have been great though.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

filmgirlcw 12y ago

This is a move against SharePoint Online/Box/EMC's shitty thing. The proof will be how well it works. Box can work well enough if you've got everyone on it and you're using it as your main file server. The problem is that if you want to use it with users who expect it to work like Dropbox, it's not really designed for that kind of nimble access. The pricing is totally inline with the competitors on a per-seat basis. It's even cheaper if you have any of the think client instances. Interesting to see how it plays out -- and what impact this will have on Box, now that it is delaying its IPO.

newman314 12y ago
More details as to why you don't like EMC's offering please?
- filmgirlcw 12y ago
  So I should have clarified, my experience is not with Syncolicity but with Documentum. Syncolicity might be great. Documentum, however, is/was just god awful.
thejdude 12y ago
Please please please let companies use this instead of SharePoint. Anything sane. Ah well, probably the kind of people who make "enterprise" buying decisions will not even SEE Zocalo on their perception radar, so it will never happen.
- gregd 12y ago
  I make enterprise buying decisions and it is on my radar. But then again, I frequent HN so there's that...

auvi 12y ago

I am wondering what Aaron Levie will think of this.

zefi 12y ago

This product looks great. I run Kivo (www.kivo.com YC S13) we're trying to address a lot of the same problems around sharing and storage that Dropbox et al have missed out on. Zocalo seems like a really good first pass, but I don't think tying users to a specific storage platform is the winning strategy for something that's fundamentally a collaboration app. It shouldn't matter where someone stores their files, collaboration applications should exist as layers on top of existing content. Forcing users to move to a new platform is one more point of friction when it comes to adoption. Storage companies releasing collaboration products is like email providers only letting their users email other users of their service - Gmail to Gmail email product. The reason why email works as a communication protocol is because it is an open one. Content collaboration is the same, the company that will win this market will be the one that addresses it without letting the politics of the 'storage wars' poison its simplicity. The 'it just works' of Dropbox comes from its ability to store and sync any file without any change in user behaviour - it's just another folder. No one's created an 'it just works' product for collaboration yet, where it doesn't matter whereabouts your files are stored or who it is that you want to work with. That's what we're trying to do at Kivo, and we'll be announcing a set of integrations very soon to make that so. If you'd like to help, get in touch, my email's in my hn profile.

fred_durst 12y ago
I like your clever use of "looks great" and then a subtle dig with "seems like a really good first pass" and then sneaking in some weaknesses before explaining why the strengths of your platform are better. Then bookending a second branding mention of "Kivo" to wrap things up.
- zefi 12y ago
  I think it does look great. This is a really hard problem to solve and they've done an excellent job. I'm sorry if you feel otherwise.
  - fred_durst 12y ago
    No, I think you did a great job of appearing really positive. That style is all the rage these days and it looks like you have a great grasp of it. Keep up the great work!

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

lingben 12y ago

sorry if this has already been mentioned but does zocalo have client side encryption? that is to say, does the file get encrypted before being sent? this part mentions encryption but is isn't clear: "All documents are stored in a designated AWS Region and transmitted in encrypted form."

mkal_tsr 12y ago
I keep looking for that and I haven't found any copy that supports the notion they have client-side encryption, so it's a non-starter for me :-(
borplk 12y ago
I don't think it does. A lot of the features would not work without them being able to read the file. They may offer it as a "checkbox" (I'd say unlikely). But certainly it would never be 100% client-side encrypted.

JonLim 12y ago

Forgive my ignorance, but would something like this be decent for slinging around video/media files? Been investigating storage VPS solutions for doing so, but I wonder if this would be a more elegant solution.

edpichler 12y ago

Just a curious comment: Dropbox uses Amazon S3. I really like Dropbox, an state of art product and I'm also a great fan of Bezos company and his strategies, but I currently feel very satisfied with Dropbox, everything works very well.

markhahn 12y ago

Perfectly clean of any Linux taint - is this a message?

rsync 12y ago

What is the interface between the front end UI (file sharing, commenting, etc.) and the back end storage ? That is, can I manipulate the back end via s3 and s3 tools ?

Thiz 12y ago

Zocalo is a stupid name. It really is. No matter how much you thought about it, how many nights of brainstorming with your pillow smelling like señoritas, or perhaps drinking margaritas at a pub in the zocalo. It is stupid. Please say this is a 'beta' and it will be renamed to Amazon cloud, drive, square, plaza, or whatever but drop it, just drop it.

trevmckendrick 12y ago
I lived in Mexico for 2 years. Zocalo was used to refer to "downtown" or to the public square. It's where everything is, and where you go when you need to get something. I think it's a great name.
- Thiz 12y ago
  I know what zocalo is, I am a damn latino too, been there a couple of times, still that doesn't make it a nice name. It sucks, but whatev.
Shorel 12y ago
As a latino, I don't want to hear someone saying 'tzacallow'

jonah 12y ago

There's also Zócalo Public Square[0], a "not-for-profit Ideas Exchange that blends live events and humanities journalism." [0] http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/ http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/

gcb0 12y ago

i cringe that they allow to use existing amazon accounts on this.

voltagex_ 12y ago
Why?
- gcb0 12y ago
  because zero owners of regular amazon accounts are for corporate use. so far they only tied the accounts with cloud services, where the audience is clever enough to not use their home amazon accounts at. and instead create one with their employer email. now with this office suit, everyone will just login with their home account. just like they do with corporate google docs. well, google is a bad example because then they made everything worse by joining personal and domain (which often meant employee at small company) into a single account.

CommitPull 12y ago

Cool stuff, is this Amazon's answer to Google Drive and Dropbox?

dendory 12y ago

I fully expect version 2 will have full document editing, competing directly with GDrive and Office 365.

mercurialshark 12y ago

Why'd they go with a British accent?

joeblau 12y ago

> # What might go wrong? (This is a test of imagination, not confidence.) > Google might finally unleash GDrive and steal a lot of Dropbox's thunder > (especially if this takes place before launch.) In general, the online > storage space is extremely noisy, so being marginally better isn't good > enough; there has to be a leap in value worthy of writing/blogging/telling > friends about...[1] This was from Drew's YC dropbox application. It looks like it should have said "Amazon, Google, Apple, and Microsoft would all unleash their cloud platforms at lower price points with software services sitting on top." Drew does have a very valid point: Being marginally better isn't good enough. I love Dropbox's service and I want them to win, but this pricing war is not great news for them. [1] - https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/27532820/app.html https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/27532820/app.html

anotherevan 12y ago

Does anyone have experience with Egnyte? https://www.egnyte.com/ https://www.egnyte.com/ The thing that makes it attractive to me is that it can sync with a Netgear NAS. About half our staff are in a central office, the other half are remote, so this is a solution that looks like it would cater well to that situation.

frozenport 12y ago

How do you pronounce this?

mark_l_watson 12y ago

I have mixed feelings about this. I dumped iTunes for Amazon's music store - works really well on iPad, Android phones, and my laptop. Apple lost me when my curated iTunes library was not available on my droid. Really like the Amazon player clients. Zocalo looks good for one account for pictures and videos shared by my extended family with permissions, and still keep my work stuff separate. Where Dropbox really wins though: smooth integration with so many other services. I can, for example, edit my leanpub manuscripts on my laptop, surprisingly well also on my iPad, and actually OK on my droid phone. Same for many other apps that use the Dropbox APIs. What will probably keep me on Dropbox forever is that $100/year seems really inexpensive for a service that I use a lot, and it would take too much of my time to switch.

gregd 12y ago
and it would take too much of my time to switch. Yeah, that drag & drop can sure be a pain in the ass... :)

Hengjie 12y ago

It'd be interesting to see if their annotation allows for exporting to their original documents. It's similar to what http://www.notablepdf.com http://www.notablepdf.com did but only for PDF documents. Their export functionality for MS Word is quite interesting, and would actually work extremely well for lawyers who constantly use tracked changes.

wkd415 12y ago

Conflicted copies? I don't understand how that is never mentioned when talking about collaborating on documents. Comments are worthless without track changes. Someone make word obsolete by making track changes better.

thejdude 12y ago
If all editing is done in the cloud, I don't see any problems. MS Word isn't designed for collaborative editing. That, or use something like markdown + version control.

grigy 12y ago

Isn't this a reason to not use AWS anymore?

gomesnayagam 12y ago

my startup (http://tataatsu.com http://tataatsu.com ) launched similar ditto amazon zocalo 1 year back, http://collablayer.com/ http://collablayer.com/ :(

jorangreef 12y ago

The company that does best in this market will be the company that exists to service its customers, not the company that exists to compete with others.

gautamjeyaraman 12y ago

We built and launched exactly the same app one year back at http://collablayer.com http://collablayer.com

gmbh_solo 12y ago
How does collablayer synchronize collaboration? Zocalo instance does not synchronize in real time. Average 30 seconds per change. Larger documents time goes way up. Using api from angular js front end to put and get documents from s3 wait for pdfs from aspose service 30 seconds Word and 60 seconds xcel. Changes in cloud drive folder take 20 seconds more.
deleted 12y ago
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