Our computers are shrinking again, even as they become incredibly more powerful. Ultra portable laptops, sometimes called ‘netbooks’, are sitting on boardroom tables all across America, and smartphones are in the hands of teenagers, the college crowd. and (shudder) even our CEOs. As these devices move from the techno-elite early adopters to the workspace, we will see even more advancement.
First, let’s take a little time to investigate some of the offerings. At the high end we have systems like the Macbook Air from Apple. While the Air might not have the smallest form factor, it is slim, sleek, and nearly weightless compared to most laptop computers on the market today. One of the reasons it can be so small is that Apple has moved the CD/DVD drive out of the laptop, allowing for a much thinner base. On the high end version we also have a tiny, energy efficient, 64GB solid state hard drive. You can think of the hard drives in an iPod for comparison. The reason that Apple knows it can get away with such a small hard drive is that they offer their me.com as an alternative to your storage needs. Me’s storage is built into the Mac OS as the ‘iDisk’ and it looks just like any other hard drive on an Apple.
Dell has released their version of a netbook with the Inspiron Mini 9. It is small by any standard, the screen is 8.9″ compared to the 13″ display on the Macbook Air, but the draw here is not just its small form factor, but also the small price. Where the Macbook Air comes in two flavors, from $1799 to $2598, the Inspiron Mini 9 is only $349 for the Linux powered model with 4GB of hard drive, and $399 for the Microsoft Windows version sporting an 8 GB hard drive. Those low prices could drive the market to adopt the Mini 9, from parents grabbing them for the tweens, to the college crowd snapping them up for the perfect laptop for the party/study/travel/social computing platform. By the way, the gang at NotebookReview.com did an excellent review of the Mini 9, and you can find that here.
Besides the native Linux operating system offered on the Mini 9, another feature that has attracted me to this netbook is that it comes bundled with Box.net’s online storage solution. Dell is offering 2GB of free online storage with every Mini 9 they sell, and you can easily up that by spending a little extra at Box.net.
I spent some time with Sean Lindo from Box.net this afternoon. I had some questions about where Box.net’s cloud storage stood today, where they are headed and how they will handle the growing adoption of online storage in the market. The following is part of our exchange via email.
MW: With more hardware providers offering online storage solutions as real-time storage alternatives, will we see the reintroduction of a network based computer, like the one Oracle offered a decade ago?
SL: Most definitely. We’ve already witnessed a host of truly web-oriented computers come to market from the most established players in the business. As an example, Dell recently partnered with Box.net to provide Inspiron Mini 9 users with our online file storage and collaboration services. When Asus introduced the Eee PC, many thought it was a nice toy for the gadget crowd. But then HP introduced the Mini-Note, and Dell’s come out with the Mini 9, which looks like a fantastic product. And let’s not forget, while it doesn’t play in the same price range, Apple’s MacBook Air is a computer that relies heavily on accessing data and content via the web and wireless networks at home and on-the-go.
I think the difference today is that the industry is providing consumers, both in the home and the enterprise, with a more complete solution than before – web connections are accessible wherever people go, sleek and powerful web-based applications are in place to help people access their data wherever they are and online storage has become more secure, reliable and inexpensive. Of course, there’s more work to do. But because of these trends, PCs don’t have to rely so much on data stored on a local hard drive. It can simply tap into information and applications that are reliably hosted online.
In addition, I think open standards have really helped move this notion of a network-oriented computer forward. More consumers can take advantage of innovative solutions from so many companies out there. Box.net, through our OpenBox platform, gives consumers the power to use files stored on Box.net with applications they like. We make it really easy for third party developers to write apps that seamlessly access data our customers store on Box.net. It’s a very user-centric approach we take pride in promoting.
MW: How is Box.net planning to scale in the coming years as we shift from a desktop based storage society, to the Internet cloud based, storage seeking society of the future?
SL: Box.net has been successfully scaling its service over the past 3 years we’ve been in business. We have a competency around managing large amounts of data, while ensuring that data is stored redundantly and securely. Our growing base of 2 million users reflects how well we’ve been able to keep up. We’re certainly excited to see this massive shift of users to web-based storage, and we’re ready for it.
MW: Do you personally see storage becoming a commodity in the new computing paradigm? By that I mean will storage become less of a thought in our minds when we think of computers? With online storage being a cheap and ostensibly limitless alternative to local hard drives, will we cease to worry about how big our hard drives are, knowing we can simply rent more storage as needed?
SL: Yes. In many ways, online storage on its own is already a commodity. Box.net has been successful because it’s never been about storage for us. The company was founded to address a problem, which is how can people access and collaborate on all their data wherever they are, in the simplest, most reliable and secure way possible.
While I couldn’t use the entire conversation in this article, I wanted to include most of it because Sean’s words are foreshadowing where we are heading in many ways. Sean tells us that it has never been about the storage, and that makes complete sense.
How soon until the computer on my lap has GSM built in and offers me a history of where I have been? How long until I can record every conversation and store it online for later retreval? Soon, all of that and more, especially as the price for storage falls into the basement. Google gives me 17 GB just because I use a lot of their services. It just makes sense to offer me free storage so that they can show me ads wrapped around the services I like to use.
As soon as the industry realizes that storage is like good coffee in the diner, you just give it away so that people eat the pie; then we will see a huge explosion of applications that thrive upon large data sets. We already have some WiFi in major cites, Starbucks, Panera Bread and even some McDonald’s with hotspots – so your online storage is accessible when you are getting coffee or lunch, but we need WiMax before this makes sense for most of our data. If you store the majority of your documents on the cloud, well, then you need the cloud all of the time. It isn’t enough to have your Internet connectivity just at home, the office and the occasional public hotspot, we need the wireless carriers to blanket the nation with fast, reliable Internet connectivity. And I want it now.
Lastly, let’s not forget that we also need some killer apps to usher in the need for more cloud-based storage. Maybe Twitter will offer me a couple of gigs worth of storage so that I can automatically store any document someone sends me on the service. They don’t allow that yet, but they will. Maybe an application that Perhaps an application will offer to catalog all of your media, and then give you a social network of people who like the same movies and music? Techno Mule is doing that to some degree already, but there is more on the way. A lot more, I hope.