Cloud storage

Well, thanks to ridiculous charges to Livedrive resellers being made for storage volume, it appears that hundreds of Livedrive resellers are now going to stop selling backup - including the one I currently use. However I'm now contemplating cloud storage instead of backup anyway as it does the job of both acting as a backup with the true flexibility of cloud storage across devices.

Just wondering what cloud storage services people use, and why. Part of me would love to resell Livedrive Briefcase (not backup) but the massive monthly fee makes it unfeasible without having guaranteed customers to help cover the bill.

From what I can see for comparison purposes, these are some of the yearly costs and storage spaces...
Livedrive - 2TB - £120
Dropbox Pro - 1TB - £95.88
Monster cloud - 512GB - £102
Google Drive - 1TB - Roughly £85
iCloud - 1TB - £83.88
JustCloud - 1TB - £143.14
Mozy Home - 125GB - £87.89

Jamie Smallman said:

No I'm not ... I got myself a new iphone and put all my pictures on there and since then I have had endless messages and updates.

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I'm still not certain what you are referring to, but the messages and updates would usually be expected with a new iphone regardless of whether you use icloud or not. I've never had a single update or message due to icloud. iCloud is apple's cloud storage system, nothing more nothing less. Any updates would be to your actual phone software, and I would imagine the only way you might get messages to do with iCloud would be if you were running out of space.

@hop I agree, but wanted to more avoid the other aspects as I essentially wanted to keep this on topic about cloud storage itself if possible. Those kind of features you mention are branded under the whole iCloud name, but they aren't AFAIK directly related to cloud storage."The cloud" is a term that was provisionally created as being for remote storage purposes but some providers use the term loosely for anything that can be achieved wirelessly and remotely.

I know what you mean about the bandwidth side of things @hop . My current backup sits at around almost 1TB and there isn't a single thing in there that I class as un-important. This makes it bloody awful if I now needed to backup with another cloud provider BUT i do love the security of an off-site backup for the same reasons that you give.

There's another thing that businesses etc need to consider about cloud backup. For any financial data, medical records and similar, it is a law that only genuine UK based data centres can be used for any cloud storage purposes. This massively narrows down the list and means that Dropbox and many other popular suppliers can't be used.

I have actually woke up in the middle of the night with a possible solution that would work for both personal and businesses, whereby backups would be off-site, secure, fully automatic AND it doesn't rely on cloud providers or third parties in any way... so it would be perfect for those who don't trust such providers with their data. I'd post more details on the idea but I may actually see if I can materialise it first and seek an investor

hop said:

You can already get this using very old technologies which many are not aware of. Have a read about distributed files systems such as the open source AFS (Andrew File System). With AFS data is duplicated and stored in regional cells which redundancy of data has associated storage costs it can have benefits - I know of a very large multinational who are heavily using AFS.

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AFS and similar still means that data is essentially stored on medium not owned by you? This is what I believe is people's biggest fear and the reason why I personally found cloud services VERY difficult to sell. My idea would make it possible for a computer user to own their own backup media in the way they would by using an external drive for example. However it would be fully automated / daily backup that is off-site in a premises only accessible to you and would not be limited by bandwidth of your internet connection as it would not require one. Now I bet you're puzzled

highguyuk said:

I was waiting for a post like this wmr, as I too have had an email from the reseller (presumably the same as you as I went with the one you recommended some time ago).

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Sussex PC repair? Anyway, I don't blame them for packing it in. Livedrive's new charges to resellers are not making sense. The monthly fee has gone up a bit - quite acceptable. However they now charge £20 per 1TB or £50 per 5TB of backup storage per month used by a resellers customers. Yet they only charge an annual fee of around £30 for 1TB of storage on a briefcase account to resellers. Some resellers have 20TB of data backed up by customers, so their bill has risen from around £400 per year to around £2300. Yet they continue to charge direct customers £5 per month for unlimited backup space.

A lot of resellers claim that they based their initial business model knowing that resellers would sell accounts for pennies therefore spreading awareness and use of the product. Doing what they have done has meant that 90% of resellers are likely to quit so if those customers now go directly to Livedrive they've won.

highguyuk said:

I can't contribute as I know approximately NOTHING about this, but will definitely consider whichever route you decide to take...

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I will try to come up with something. It's difficult as I do love the Livedrive service, but reselling it now only works viably for those who wish to sell Briefcase and not backup. I don't ideally want to go with overseas data centres so that really narrows it down. Although the £5 per month charge for backup directly off Livedrive is reasonable, I'm a man of morals and don't like what they've done to resellers so would prefer not to give them my custom, but may yet have to swallow my pride. But then again, Livedrive have also now made their backup system NOT backup EXE's and ISO files - which is another good chunk of what I do like to back up. Pay for briefcase and those files ARE uploaded. It's quite annoying me at the moment. If I could get enough Briefcase customers together to make a reseller plan viable I'd go that way around it - but all cloud services are a nightmare to sell.

afasoas said:

All cloud storage means is storing your shiz on other peoples computers.

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Yes and no. I can't entirely agree. There's a huge difference between other peoples computers, and multiple data centres built for the task.

afasoas said:

Unfortunately relying on a cloud provider makes you subject to their charges, t's&c's, mistakes and breaches.

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Very true, and unfortunately one of the biggest reasons that it is so hard to sell.