Archive for the ‘cloud computing’ Category

Small Businesses Cloud Adoption Rising

Wednesday, May 16th, 2012

Another interesting point from the recent study by Spiceworks highlights the aggressive level of cloud adoptions that we are seeing in the small business space. SMBs are very quickly turning to the cloud for their basic application needs. Email leads the list, but other important, cloud-delivered, applications are on the upswing as well.

The study claims that cloud services are now used by 48 percent of SMBs, up from 28 percent for the first half of 2011. That’s pretty amazing growth in less than half a year!

Other interesting small business cloud adoption stastics

“The top five cloud services by usage are web hosting (49 percent), e-mail hosting (32 percent), data backup (25 percent) content filtering (24 percent) and application hosting (23 percent). The top cloud services respondents plan to purchase in the next six months are data backup (17 percent), application hosting (12 percent), data storage (12 percent), and e-mail hosting (11 percent).”

When to OEM

Thursday, May 10th, 2012

oem vs buildWe just published a piece on BostInno on when large companies should OEM vs. build a product in house. The build vs. partner decision is a big one for large companies, particularly ones looking to get into competitive cloud spaces such as cloud storage.

The top two questions on all of these decision-makers’ minds are: ‘How much will it cost?,’ and ‘How fast can we deliver the product?’ Cost and speed are two major concerns, but there are also some other big factors that should go into the decision-making process when considering to build in-house or via a third-party partnership. The other key concerns we mention in the piece are:

  • Speed
  • Cost
  • Maintenance
  • Best Practices
  • Focus

Teams, hiring, and managing people are as big a part in the decision to build in-house or to OEM-it as the cloud offering that you want to create. If you truly want a competitive advantage over others in your market, you need to think beyond speed and cost, and more about longevity. It can take a big investment to create a new offering, so it’s important you have a plan to support that product once it hits the market. Your examination of these areas will help you make the best educated decision for your company.

Check out the article!

File Sharing with OfficeDrop

Friday, May 4th, 2012

OfficeDrop makes file sharing easy. You can share both files and folders, and OfficeDrop gives you several options to help you control how your data is shared. You can share via an unprotected link or share with specific people via email, restrict the length of time that a files is available via a share, revoke a share and audit if the user you shared with has seen the file or not. See the video below to learn more, or visit the help links at the bottom of this post.

Video: File Sharing with OfficeDrop

You can learn more about how to do file sharing with OfficeDrop on our help pages for both file sharing and folder sharing.

OfficeDrop on Pandodaily

Tuesday, May 1st, 2012

We are very happy to have been featured on Pandodaily recently in a piece penned by Erin Griffith. I’ve been very happy with the depth of the articles on Pando, so it’s exciting to have them cover our recent news. You can read about OfficeDrop on Pandodaily here.

She writes:

“Boston-based OfficeDrop has refreshed its product. The B2B-focused cloud storage provider now accepts files of any type and has doubled the size of its storage plans to accommodate for it.

Since the company’s focus is on the ability to scan and upload files from devices, which are then indexed as PDFs, OfficeDrop also upgraded its back-end to make that process faster. Oh, and the link sharing function Dropbox just announced has been a feature at OfficeDrop for some time now.”

It’s great to get solid press in the newest technology blog. If you haven’t spent time on their site, you should check it out. There are some great articles.

Online Cloud Storage to Reach $3 Billion This Year

Monday, April 30th, 2012

A while ago IDC predicted that this year, 2012, would be the year that the online storage industry would reach $3 billion. That’s pretty awesome, and the recent entrance of Apple last year and Google this year to the party shows that big companies are starting to take this space seriously.

OfficeDrop continues to have a great year, and although we do feel a little like David vs. a bunch of Goliaths, we are still excited that so many small businesses trust us to be their cloud filing system.

I’ll be giving a talk at the upcoming Business Insider event in NYC on how lean startups can compete in crowded spaces and thrive. Here are a couple of slides which I’ll be using at the talk. Hope to see you there!

cloud storage compsofficedrop growh

Major OfficeDrop Update

Thursday, April 19th, 2012

Hello OfficeDrop users! There is a major update to the OfficeDrop user interface and backend that was pushed to your accounts late last night! We are very excited about these changes, and we think they will make your online cloud storage experience even better.

Updated OfficeDrop UI Video

Here is a three minute video that will walk you through some of the major updates to the application.

Updates to the Application

In addition to the updates to the user interface here are some important updates that you’ll notice:

  • Immediately available – uploaded and scanned files are now visible in your account right away. The backend processing that happens to make them text searchable and generate the thumbnail images now happens later in the process, so you can have immediate access to the files. They will show up as a file type icon (such as the familiar icons for PDFs in the case of a scanned document) while they are waiting to become text searchable.
  • All file types – OfficeDrop now accepts ALL file types. That means you can upload things like MP3′s, videos, CAD files, software files and more into your account and share them easily. This was one of the most highly requested features and we are happy to have it for you. Note that OfficeDrop won’t search the text of a non-document file type. So things like scans, PDFs, Word Documents, Excel files, etc will be searchable just as they always have been, but video and music and other digital files will not be searchable.
  • Improved search – Over the next few weeks you’ll see dramatic improvements to the search bar, but some of these improvements are already available including the integration of file name & file content text search
  • Better account management and upgrade pages – we’ve improved the account and upgrade pages to make it easier for you to manage your account settings
  • Trash – There is now a deleted file folder where you can go to retrieve deleted files and restore them into your account.

Please contact our help if you come across any issues or if you have questions. We hope that you love the new improvements as much as we do!

OfficeDrop Announces New Private Label Cloud Storage Program

Tuesday, April 17th, 2012

We are pleased to announce our new white label OEM offering for cable and ISP’s – using OfficeDrop, large telecom companies can offer their own, branded cloud storage to their end customers. This offering is intended to help big telecom companies jump start their cloud services offerings. The press release is below

Private Label Cloud Storage Program Details

 

OfficeDrop Announces Custom Apps for Cable and ISPs

 

CAMBRIDGE, MA — APRIL 17, 2012 — OfficeDrop announced a custom small business online cloud storage solution for cable and internet service providers (ISPs) today. With 34 percent of small businesses investigating and intending to implement cloud services, many are looking to their cable and ISPs to provide them with easy access to the cloud.

Cable and ISPs can work with OfficeDrop to get to the cloud in just a few months. OfficeDrop’s custom OEM partner offering includes access to a robust cloud storage backend; mobile and desktop sync and scan-to-cloud apps; a full-featured online storage account for consumers including search, sync and sharing; and more.

“Cloud SaaS apps are a $14.5 billion industry, and customers are looking to trusted technology partners like ISPs for solutions. But building a cloud storage platform and apps from scratch is incredibly expensive and time-consuming,” said OfficeDrop CEO Prasad Thammineni. “OfficeDrop has experience building custom-branded cloud solutions that support millions of file uploads per month. Cloud storage is a huge area of opportunity for the internet service providers small businesses rely upon to do business every day.”

By partnering with OfficeDrop, here’s what cable and ISPs will get:

  • Robust cloud storage backend hosted in the cloud of choice
  • Branded desktop sync, web, tablet and mobile apps that link any device to the cloud
  • Seamless integration with an ISPs’ current products and services
  • Fully featured online storage including file search engine, labels and cloud metadata, sharing, multi-user accounts and more
  • Middle of the funnel marketing nurturing
  • Help and support content
  • Open API for third party integrations
  • Billing and account management OR integration with current ecommerce engines
  • Customizable pricing plans – freemium, free trials and multiple pricing tiers to fit market needs.


For more information on OfficeDrop’s custom cable and ISP solution, please visit: http://www.officedrop.com/oem-cloud-storage

About OfficeDrop
OfficeDrop makes it easy for small businesses to scan paper to the cloud and access documents from anywhere, at any time, from any device. OfficeDrop’s cloud filing cabinet lets users sort, search and share documents– giving paper new life and making documents collaborative. Headquartered in Cambridge, MA, OfficeDrop was founded in 2007. For more information, visit www.officedrop.com.

SaaS to Grow to $14.5 Billion in 2012

Wednesday, April 11th, 2012

Gartner is predicting that Software as a Service will hit $14.5 billion in 2012 – 17.9% growth off the previous year. SaaS grow will stay robust until 2015 when it should be $22.1 billion. At OfficeDrop, we happen to think it will stay strong beyond 2015, but I’m pretty sure that this just a limit of how far out Gartner wants to make a prediction at this time, not an actual limit of how long SaaS will continue to grow.

A quote from the release: “After more than a decade of use, adoption of SaaS continues to grow and evolve regionally within the enterprise application markets,” said Sharon Mertz, research director at Gartner. “Increasing familiarity with the SaaS model, continued oversight on IT budgets, the growth of platform as a service (PaaS) developer communities and interest in cloud computing are now driving adoption forward.”

Another cool thing about the Gartner press release is that it’s dated May 27, 2012 – they are really forward thinking over there! ;)

North America Leads SaaS Adoption

According to the release,  ”North America, specifically the U.S., currently represents the largest opportunity for SaaS, and it is the most mature of the regional markets. SaaS software revenue is forecast to total $9.1 billion in 2012, up from $7.8 billion in 2011. Consistent with other regions, North America shows the highest SaaS deployments in expense management, financials, email and office suites. Use of Web conferencing is higher in North America than in other regions, in part because of a highly distributed workforce.”

(You can read more here in Computerworld.)

 

PCWorld – OfficeDrop is One of 20 Clever Cloud Apps

Monday, April 9th, 2012

PCWorld has a slideshow showcasing 20 apps that make great use of the cloud – and OfficeDrop is on the list! Click through to the 20th to see an image of the OfficeDrop iPad paper app and read what PCWorld has to say.

PCWorld OfficeDrop cloud app

The article says:

“Why You Need It: This digital filing system handles any kind of paperwork. Imagine you’re at a business lunch, and you take notes on a napkin. With your iPhone, Android handset, or iPad camera, you can scan your napkin scribbles, a paper contract that someone else at the table needs you to sign, and the receipt for your meal.

OfficeDrop saves them all to the cloud as PDF files that are instantly searchable. While you sit there, you can share everything with your assistant back at the office.”

Check out the PCWorld article now!

Cloud Computing Drives Mobile and Vice Versa

Thursday, April 5th, 2012

The press is starting to understand something that we’ve known here for a while at OfficeDrop – Mobile and Cloud Computing go hand in hand. Check out this chart on top reasons for an enterprise to adopt a cloud strategy:

why adopt cloud computing

Why Adopt Cloud Computing

Mobile is the top reason enterprises are moving applications to cloud computing platforms.

We’ve seen this here at OfficeDrop, with the success of our mobile applications and the huge engagement we get with our cloud connected mobile apps like the OfficeDrop iPhone PDF app and our Android scanner app. If you don’t have them yet, you should download them now – they are free and come with your OfficeDrop online cloud account – with both the paid or free accounts!

The article says, “With the increasing number and diversity of mobile computing devices, which have much less on-board storage than traditional end-user computing environments, there is a shift toward moving much of the functionality of an app into a centralized environment, like a cloud. This allows storage, computation, data access, security and management to all be handled in a centralized fashion.”

In other words, the cloud and mobile computing go hand in hand, where the mobile device can simply access the large amounts of data stored in the cloud at anytime, from anywhere.

Accessing the Cloud from Mobile Devices Growing

Another great piece of information in the article comes from ABI research, who suggest that “240 million business customers will access cloud-computing services via mobile devices by 2015 and that number could approach a billion.”

The article goes on to talk about the difference between native mobile apps and cloud connected apps – “But applications that run on mobile devices are often limited in functionality and are generally not business-class applications; it’s very rare to find native smartphone apps used as serious front ends for database queries, for instance.

In contrast, mobile cloud computing applications run on servers that reside in the cloud. Application data also lives in the cloud and results are fed back to the mobile device via an over-the-air network such as 3G or 4G. Users access apps and data via the browser on their mobile devices.”

You should visit the Computerworld to read the entire piece here.

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