http://funambol.com/solutions/requestpublication.php.
The personal cloud market is quickly approaching the proverbial tipping point. There are more than one billion end user personal cloud accounts in the world, with double-digit percentage growth forecasted for each of the next several years. At the same time, industry observers believe the market has yet to 'cross the chasm', from early adopters and advanced users to the mainstream, although this is expected shortly. The 'net' result is that there remains ample opportunity, especially for nimble companies.
At the same time, the balance of power among personal cloud providers has shifted, almost imperceptibly. It started with Apple MobileMe and iCloud, and was followed by clouds from other large smartphone manufacturers. Independent providers such as Dropbox and Amazon (with Cloud Drive) entered the scene. Today, the market is still in a formative stage. Although the big mobile device ecosystem players -- Apple with iCloud, Microsoft with SkyDrive and Google with Drive -- claim the largest number of user cloud accounts, this is mainly due to device embedding and license bundling. However, other personal cloud services are gaining real user traction, evidence of the groundswell that mass market users are becoming more comfortable storing their content and data in the cloud. More recently, mobile operators have entered the market, with other types of companies known to be joining the fray soon.
My company has worked with scores of large, global mobile companies to deploy personal cloud solutions over several years. We have learned of 25 strategic considerations that companies who are considering offering a personal cloud service should know. These fall into the categories of marketing, legal, financial and product/technical. A list of these follows; if you would like to learn more, you are invited to download the white paper at http://funambol.com/solutions/requestpublication.php.
Marketing
1. White-label to promote your brand
2. Integrated e-marketing
Legal
3. Legal ownership of data
4. Where end user data physically resides
5. Data privacy
6. Legal compliance
7. Copyright compliance
8. Illicit content
9. File sharing
Financial
10. Deployment flexibility
11. Scalability: start small, pay-as-you-grow
12. End user monetization
13. Business models
14. Supplier history
Product/Technical
15. Customizability
16. Support for your infrastructure
17. Billing integration
18. Customer service integration
19. Monitoring integration
20. Ability to customize user interface
21. Ability to materially influence product roadmap
22. Depth of vendor expertise
23. Device support
24. Time to market
25. Reporting and analytics
