Cloud Wars

I got a notification on my iPhone recently – “You are running out of iCloud space. Click here to see upgrade options”. I am a total Apple fanboy, with most of my gadgets linked to my apple id – iPhone, iPad, Watch, TV and the Macbook! The meagre 5GB of iCloud space unfortunately is not sufficient even for the backups of each of these devices! What option do I have? I sign up for the dollar a month service for the 50GB space on iCloud! This is in addition to the couple of dollars I pay every month for the 1TB of space on One Drive (for all my photos, documents, laptop backups, etc..).

We are living in the digital world with the IOT devices getting all pervasive starting with the innocent echo device that has made its way into many homes. With a whole lot of photos spread across devices, along with a range of documents, personal ID cards, ebooks, etc.. a personal space on the cloud is well on its way to be a necessity.

We all already have some personal space on the cloud – be it your emails on gmail, or the music playlist on spotify – they are all stored on the cloud. Introduction of 5G and related services would generate even more data in the future. Data centres are mushrooming and would continue to expand with more and more of our activities moving online.

While still very nascent, having a private space on the cloud would soon be as ubiquitous as having a roof over your head.

The big tech know this and are leaving no stone unturned to woo us into their service. Apple launched its subscription bundle Apple One and sneaked in a whopping 2TB of cloud space in its premium option;  Microsoft has been bundling its Microsoft office suite with its cloud offering; amazon/google have their own offerings along with a countless others.

These companies know that this is he next growth area with a big potential moat as it is tough for a consumer to move out once he/she has bought in into the service.

As these services evolve, I see a lot of opportunities in consolidating all the needs and providing them as a bundled service. Currently, there are multiple places that I end up going to for the various cloud needs which is non effective. The 1TB of space on one drive, 50GB on icloud, In addition I subscribe separately to host my blog, a separate service for my online diary and another one for my home camera. Plus the countless other services that host my data in terms of email, social media, etc..

In my view, the ideal cloud service of the future would be someone where all my digital material can sit without disturbance and I can pay a monthly charge for it – privacy and the convenience, with the always-up reliability. All the personal space (photos, documents), cloud needs for the internet of things (live camera feed, Smart speaker preferences), along with some hosting space into one bundled service would create a winner.

In addition to these services, there needs to be regulation on the lines of what can the provider do and cannot do with the data, along with clear laws for portability (very much like mobile number portability for our cellular connections). While the social media was a war for our attention trading in our data, the future would be a war for our data and the opportunity to hold them all. Very much like the virtual roof on our heads that everyone would aspire to have as a necessity.

We are sure in the early days of this revolution, but one that is surely going to be all engulfing and any service having a head start would have a huge competitive advantage in these “Cloud Wars”.

This post originally appeared on my LinkedIn profile-https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/cloud-wars-bharat-jhurani/