Written by Laura Allen Phillips, Research Analyst, Parks Associates
Taking the "if you build it, they will come," approach several big players (Amazon, Google, and Apple) have launched or announced digital locker services designed to draw consumer interest - and dollars - into the cloud. This is a departure from the online storage and backup services as an entry point for cloud usage. Will it speed up adoption? How effective is digital media as a cloud driver? Now that you've built it, will they really come? This could make for a very interesting cloud panel discussion(s) next week.
Written by Kurt Scherf, Vice President and Principal Analyst, Parks Associates
I'm particularly excited that we've got some of the major players in cloud media and services speaking at our event - NewBay Software, Funambol, Western Digital, PacketVideo, and Catch Media. Plus, a keynote from David Grubb at Motorola Mobility (investment in Catch Media, purchase of Zecter in the last 12 months).
And now Best Buy is joining the ranks of Google, Apple, and Amazon in bring a Catch Media-powered cloud music service to the U.S. - Best Buy Music Cloud: http://www.bestbuymusiccloud.com/.
Written by Luigi Lenguito, Director of WW Services Marketing, Dell
What they have got right is to "preload" the cloud with content .... the "upload" is still too long with current technologies (my 260GB of stuff are replicating with DellDataSafeOnline since 3 weeks and I'm only at 65GB !) ... most of the world is on aDSL , that is 1MB upload speeds .... till fiber is with us I think cloud as storage will be challenging for most. But for digital music when the cloud is with the music store (Amazon, iTunes, etc.) then it's really an easy play as storage deduplication simplify the infrastructure and download speeds are ok today .... we're not there yet, but getting closer. Streaming today seem still a better play.
