Personal Cloud Tipping Point?

Hal Steger : Thinking Out Cloud
Hal Steger
Vice President of Worldwide Marketing at Funambol. 20+ years of marketing & product management experience at high-growth, innovative global software companies.
| This blog is about personal cloud solutions, technology, trends and market developments. Its scope is to comment on and discuss several aspects of personal clouds.

Personal Cloud Tipping Point?

I've seen signs in February that indicate that personal clouds are nearing a tipping point -- consider:

1. Gartner Personal Cloud Report. Gartner published a report in February entitled, 'Market Trends: CSPs Face Competition From OTT Providers in the Personal Cloud'. You can read more about it at http://www.gartner.com/id=2324015. The report talks about how mobile operators are increasingly getting into the personal cloud game, their advantages and ways they can win. If you are seriously interested in this market, the report is a must read, as it is one of the best indications yet that the market is reaching critical mass. It is also independent validation by a highly respected analyst firm that pretty everything we have been saying about this market for the past several years is coming true :)

2. Stratecast (Frost & Sullivan) Report on the Connected Home. Stratecast is a research service that advises telcos with strategic insight. They published a report in February about connected home technology and how it can be evaluated based on six attributes: Appeal, Price, Home Network, Content, Communication Services and Telemetry (info on the condition of physical space in a home).  The report's author, Mike Jude, and I talked about how one of the biggest challenges, as well as opportunities, regarding 'digital lifestyle' personal clouds -- that help people manage their digital life by syncing, storing and sharing pictures, videos, music, files and more -- is reducing complexity while improving ease-of-use. This is a common theme among personal cloud analysts and is another sign the tipping point is near.

3. Customer & Analyst Interactions. In the past month, I met with several large companies who are moving full speed ahead with plans to launch a personal cloud service. I also briefed many industry analysts beyond the ones mentioned. Without disclosing confidential info, it is fair to say that the number of personal clouds that will be launched this year will dwarf those from last year. There is a lot of innovation that is not yet apparent to casual observers. This is another indication of a tipping point.

4. Early front-runners seem to be losing an edge. I found a lot in this article, 'Stuck Between the Dropbox that was and the iCloud that isn't yet', that resonated. This comes on the heels of yet another iCloud outage (Outages result in gray skies for iCloud users). It also comes as Dropbox CEO Drew Houston, at Mobile World Congress, talked about the danger of lock-in into a personal cloud from mobile device makers and operators (MWC: Dropbox CEO criticizes Apple cloud lock-in). That must have well received by MWC attendees, many of whom work for those companies. Drew does raise a good point about avoiding lock-in (note to self: avoid Dropbox lock-in :)

The take-away? Personal clouds are approaching the tipping point, as there are several new services coming soon with a lot of innovation. It's a great time to be in this industry as well as a user.