The Aggregation of Commodity Storage is Good Business

The implications of commodity storage are not hard to determine. The prices are going down. The game is afoot. The vendors want your data. They want your money. They want to hook you now to “serve” you for the long haul.

Box, Dropbox, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Apple are all in this to win it.

In the case of Microsoft they have multiple free or very inexpensive storage options with OneDrive, One Drive for Business and indirectly with other business oriented solutions with their Yammer and SharePoint offerings. That data is going somewhere. Someone wants to store it for you – initially for free and then for FEE. Monetization Will Happen. Each of the other vendors listed in the table also have free options and designs to monetize the storage of YOUR DATA.

Game Over or Game On?

It's not game over. It's game on for consumers. It’s also game on for Businesses.

This is the opportunity for storage vendors to offer true value added services and to extend the OOTB experience. The vendors that make it easy, affordable and effective will win. Every vendor is starting to chat up the extended offerings. The base level offerings are not enough to convince everyone. In a follow up post I’ll chat about some of the real-world challenges facing startups and established businesses.

Aggregation Points

One critical element is going to be a place to aggregate all of those disparate (commodity) storage options. Vendors, including my company, are building solutions as a way to aggregate those disparate data repositories. The realization is that there is a need to aggregate, communicate and inculcate information and insights from the various data stores.

Ultimately the goal is to provide information and insights in a secure and predictable experience.

The Goal: Your Data ... Delivered!

For the legacy vendors … this is a wake up call. This is not your father’s EIM.

Note: This post was inspired by an article in the Wall Street Journal on March 28th. Link – Full article available to subscribers

Image Source: WSJ

Jeff is a expert in the Enterprise Content Management industry. He is an international speaker and writer on the Intersection of People and Process in Social, Mobile and Cloud Computing. He is a contributing author to Elite Daily and to the Personal Branding Blog. Over the past 20 years he has worked with customers and partners to design, develop and deploy solutions around the world. He has worked for Microsoft, FileNet (IBM), K2, Captaris, Open Text, Kofax, Kodak and Winshuttle. Currently he is the Director of Strategic Alliances andGimmal.
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