My Top 5 Cloud Predictions for 2013

Posted on December 30, 2012 by lyecies

As 2012 comes to an end, it’s easy to look back and marvel at what a great year this has been for the Cloud market. Nearly two thirds of online adults are now using some form of Cloud service, and the amount of people using file sync and sharing services grew from 9% to 15% from 2010 to 2012. Large players like Apple and Google took notice of this rapidly growing market, and validated it with the introduction of their own (albeit, platform-limited) service offerings.

Here at SugarSync, we focused on evolving our service to match the evolving needs of customers that have a more mobile lifestyle than ever before. We recently launched SugarSync 2.0, a complete redesign of the SugarSync desktop, Web and mobile experience, to greatly simplify the use of the Cloud no matter where you happen to be using it. And we continued to sign massive partnerships to drive distribution and add value for our customers worldwide.

But where is the Cloud headed in 2013? Was the Cloud boom that we saw in 2012 a fluke, or was this year’s growth simply a precursor of what’s to come? Based on everything we’ve seen this year, and the insights I have of what’s coming up, I put together my top five predictions of what to expect in the Cloud market in 2013.

Mobile will continue to be the primary driver of Cloud usage

In 2012, SugarSync saw a dramatic increase in customers who came to us via our mobile apps. But that’s not all – regardless of whether a customer came to us through our mobile apps or by signing up online and downloading the desktop app, the most popular use of the Cloud amongst customers was the ability to access and share files via their mobile devices.

Part of this could be attributed to the fact that SugarSync has the broadest set of mobile apps on the market (iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Symbian, and Windows Mobile – with Windows Phone coming soon), which is critical to our strategy of being a completely platform-agnostic Cloud provider. But this trend was not exclusive to SugarSync – the same could be said for the Cloud industry as a whole. In fact, a recent Forrester report shows that 58% of Cloud users access the Cloud daily or even hourly via mobile devices.

And all the signs (continued growth of mobile device sales, increased IT spend on mobile technology, analyst projections for mobile growth, etc.) point that this will be a dominating trend for the Cloud in 2013. IDC recently projected that mobile devices sales will grow 20% in 2013 to a staggering $431 billion. And as more people adopt powerful smartphone and tablet technology, the need to keep content in sync across those devices for greater efficiency and productivity will continue to increase.

The Consumerization of the Cloud

Just as the iPhone was seen as a “consumer” device until it became so popular that people demanded the ability to use it at work, the same is happening to the Cloud. One of the best things about the Cloud is the ability to continually access and work on any of your files on any of your devices, no matter where you are. While many SMBs and enterprises have not yet adopted company-wide Cloud file sync and sharing services, many of their employees are already using Cloud services to simplify the sharing of large files. And for an increasingly mobile workforce, the Cloud has become an essential tool to keep connected to their work – regardless of what device they have in their hands at the moment.

Consumers are using the Cloud to dramatically increase their productivity at work, and so my prediction is that many more businesses will adopt the Cloud in 2013 in an official, company-wide capacity.

The Cloud will become an expected service on every piece of hardware

With more smartphones and tablets being sold each year, and with predictions that more people will access the Internet via mobile devices than PCs by 2015, it is not surprising that more and more people are utilizing the Cloud to maximize their mobile devices. Not only does the Cloud provide the benefit of anytime, anywhere access to all of your content, but it also solves the critical problems of storage space and the lack of file system that plague many mobile devices.

In 2012, SugarSync partnered with Lenovo to integrate SugarSync into every Lenovo laptop and tablet that ships worldwide. We also partnered with Samsung to integrate SugarSync into their AllShare Play service, which is shipping on every Samsung smartphone and tablet worldwide. These deals are an indicator of the hardware industry’s deep belief that the Cloud is bringing value to their customers, and as such, I predict that the Cloud will ship on every single smartphone and tablet that ships within 2 years, with 2013 being a banner year for these partnerships.

The Cloud will blend our work and personal lives, while keeping them separate

The elusive “work/life balance” is becoming far less elusive these days – and you can thank the Cloud for that. It used to be that your work laptop was for work only, and if you needed a personal file while you were at work, you had to wait until you got home to access it on your computer. These days, however, you can quickly attend to urgent personal matters (sending a tax form to your accountant, pulling up an important medical record, etc.) no matter where you are. Likewise, you’re no longer chained to your work device, so you can handle urgent work matters from anywhere, too. In the middle of a project, but also need to be at your child’s soccer game? No problem – you can easily track your colleague’s progress on the project you’re collaborating on, and access, work on, and send the project along right from your mobile device.

There also used to be a concern about what content you have saved to each of your devices. In most cases, you don’t want sensitive personal documents or content stored on your work devices, and your company typically doesn’t want work files being saved to your personal devices. If you have a Cloud solution that lets you choose what content you want sync’d to each individual device you have, then you can easily and effectively separate the content that is sync’d to each of your devices – work on work devices, personal on personal devices. And of course, everything remains accessible via the Cloud – but you don’t have to worry about whether things are being saved in the appropriate location.

The Cloud will be our primary method of collaboration

Gone are the days of sending large file attachments back and forth – both in work and in personal situations. With the Cloud, you can easily share files (and even entire folders) with no file-size limits, enabling the simple sharing of anything via a simple link. And if you have a Cloud solution that enables you to share as both View Only (meaning the folks you share with can view, but not edit or delete your stuff) as well as Add/Edit (which enables all parties to access and edit documents with each other), then the Cloud becomes the most efficient tool for collaboration.

Think of how many projects you work on with your colleagues, family, or friends – from work documents that require multiple levels of editing and approvals within an organization, to a couple planning their wedding who needs an easy way to share all of their contracts and wedding ideas with each other and their wedding coordinator. Rather than sending bulky attachments back and forth in email and constantly dealing with version control, you can instead share folders with your collaborators, and everyone works on the same documents, in the same folders. Everyone else in the folder is notified when a change is made by another collaborator, and the Cloud even saves previous versions so you can revert back if needed. This can literally transform the way teams work together, and for that reason, I predict that 2013 is the year when we see the true death of the attachment and the Cloud rises as our primary form of collaboration and sharing.

What are your thoughts? What do you think will be the guiding trends in the Cloud in 2013?

File Syncing Is Blending Your Work Life and Your Personal Life

Posted on December 4, 2012 by lyecies

This blog post I wrote ran on Harvard Business Review today.

File syncing is evolving into the mainstream, with the adoption rate of services such as file access, sync, and share growing from 9% in 2010 to 15% in 2012. Gartner is predicting that one-third of consumers’ digital content will be “in the cloud” by 2016. What’s more, file syncing is moving beyond the consumer space and into the business environment — almost two-thirds of the devices used by information workers are now portable, and more and more people are sharing files and information across multiple devices (smartphones, tablets, PCs, etc.) in their daily work activities. Fifty-two percent of information workers now use at least three devices for business, and 34% use four or more. We’ve seen this new wave of technology coming, and now its usage is being validated.

As a result, more and more people are combining their “personal” and “business” clouds for greater efficiency and productivity. Workers say they mix work and personal use on 60% of their devices. Earlier this year, Entrepreneur magazine said: “The idea of having a ‘personal cloud’ for storage is so 2011. Now you can combine office, mobile, web-based and even home-based storage options to achieve near-automatic caching of data on everything from your smartphone to your TV set-top box. What’s more, the line has become blurred in terms of personal and business use of such technologies.” According to the Forrester report, 47% of all cloud users are storing both personal and work data. While photos and personal documents remain among the top items stored in the cloud, other media and work documents have grown by nearly 30% in the past couple of years.

With all the data in our lives intermingling in the cloud, we need to be conscious of how we want it to function, and we need to be smart about how we organize it. Many of us enjoy the convenience of accessing multiple sets of data (personal and business) from a single cloud. But what about those who like to keep more discreet lines between their personal and professional lives? Both companies and individuals need to think through the scenarios of access, permissions and backup. For instance, what happens if you change jobs? It’s important to clarify who has access to which data. What is the company policy on having personal data on a work device and vice versa? A great way to manage in this situation is to put all of your data — both personal and business — in the cloud so you have easy access and so that it’s backed up, but you only sync local to the device that’s appropriate. When choosing a cloud solution, users should be sure to verify that this is possible.

I believe we’re only seeing the beginning of file syncing adoption and its value. (Full disclosure: I’m the CEO of a cloud computing company, which gives me a good deal of perspective — and also makes me somewhat biased.) Indeed, what’s the point of having all of these powerful smartphones and tablets if we can’t access our digital files anywhere, at any time? What does it mean for our personal and business lives, and where is this growing trend leading us? Here’s what I see from my vantage point: With people storing more of their information in the cloud, both hardware and software companies will need to continue developing “out of the box” solutions for both personal and business use (including ways to keep the two accessible, but separate), which will make it easier than ever to access, manage, and sync content. File syncing will need to remain affordable, while reducing the need to purchase bigger, more expensive hard drives. Cloud services companies will most likely continue to offer a limited amount of storage free, with larger or group plans priced economically. As a result, I think we’ll also see more IT organizations support the integration of personal and business cloud services for their employees.

This “infrastructure” is supporting a true cultural shift with business and personal data blending in the cloud, and HR policies will need to follow suit. Organizations will need to accept the fact that employees will interact with their “personal” data — such as Twitter and Facebook posts and LinkedIn connections — while at work, and rather than viewing this as a distraction, they should recognize that it is a “whole person” who shows up for work, and that being able to access personal information and networks while on the job actually makes for more productive employees. And certainly there is a bit of tit-for-tat given that employees are frequently working beyond the traditional work day.

As the lines between business and personal lives are shifting, the cloud has emerged as a key tool to keep people productive and organized. The ‘personal cloud’ is evolving to an ‘all-purpose cloud’ that helps us manage our entire lives. “Getting in sync” will soon become an everyday life action and expression, with a technical meaning that everyone understands and automatically uses.

Is the Cloud the Next Facebook in the Hype Cycle?

Posted on June 7, 2012 by lyecies

My first post on Huffington Post as appeared at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/laura-yecies/sugarsync-is-the-cloud-next-facebook_b_1568962.html?ref=technology

We’ve all seen technologies that get overhyped — built up beyond the reality of their impact. Some have argued that Facebook was overhyped, hence the reason for its current stock troubles. Inversely, others argue that Facebook has become so embedded in our lives that it is still underestimated compared to its long-term impact. I’ve often been asked if the Cloud is heading down the same path, and whether we think Cloud technology is overhyped. After all, the buzz around industry giants like Apple’s iCloud and Google Drive entering the Cloud market is loud, and that feels risky to some.

To set the stage let me first define what the Cloud is. The Cloud is a relatively new term for what we have been doing increasingly since the invention of the Web — using Internet technologies to do things (such as run applications or store data) that we previously did locally on our PCs. Companies such as SugarSync and Dropbox are providing tools that accelerate this shift through technology that more easily lets you use the Cloud in your daily life. And now that large players such as Google, Apple and Microsoft are entering the fray and imitating the innovators, there is more discussion about whether the Cloud is reaching the height of the hype cycle.

However, the power the Cloud brings to our daily life is actually quite understated. Yes, the excitement is great — but the reality is even greater. What we are seeing is the intersection and synergy of societal trends magnified by technological forces that, in a virtuous cycle, enhance those societal trends.

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