As we begin to look ahead toward 2012, one of the biggest opportunities in technology is the business of Cloud computing. In fact, respected technology research firm Gartner just released its top 11 predictions for 2012 which included not only a strong forecast of increased revenue for the Cloud industry but also indicated that the game will change significantly in just a few months.
Gartner forecasts that new, low-cost cloud services will actually overtake up to 15 percent of the current top outsourcing players during the coming year.
And while much of that will be targeted to commercial services for the cloud, savvy businesses are looking ahead to the consumer potential for cloud usage. In fact, agile innovators such as QVIVO are beginning to appear in the marketplace and are poised to shake up the Cloud industry.
Entering the market initially as a popular media content management center several months ago, QVIVO rattled the industry by announcing a major expansion this week: their popular media centers apps are now in sync with the newly developed QVIVO Cloud - with an unlimited offering to users. Via this system a potential consumer's entire personal media collection of film, music and television favorites can be accessed by the owner to share and stream between any device with the QVIVO app installed.
Liam McCallum,QVIVO founder and Executive Producer explains, “With its ease-of-use and stunning full-screen interface QVIVO has always excelled at streaming your media collection around the home; but with our mobile apps releasing this holiday season, it’s time to unveil the QVIVO Cloud featuring unlimited Cloud storage. Uploads are lightening fast, and all the heavy lifting of converting files to right formats is done automatically for users in the QVIVO Cloud."
This technology company not only automatically imports users media files but organizes them into slick libraries complete with cover art, trailers and even subtitles – ready to play and stream around the home or on the go via the QVIVO Cloud.
Jon Niermann, QVIVO co-founder, adds, “What’s really exciting about QVIVO is how it keeps the whole family’s media library in sync without the need to push huge files to each device. I can pause a movie on my PC and automatically resume it on my Mac." But the real news about this Cloud is that it is the first of its type to be platform agnostic: the first to work across Android and iPhone platforms, unlike iCloud. And unlike both Google Music and iCloud, QVIVO boasts that it can identify, upload and stream any video file in the marketplace. It is also available to global users, unlike Google Music.
“With its recent focus on the Cloud, QVIVO seems to have struck a chord with users who want their person media collections available anytime, anywhere.” McCallum adds , “With over 100k users quickly signing up, we’re thrilled with the interest so far."
It seems Cloud based media lockers are gaining traction with consumers all over the world, and with no other major Cloud based locker services offering video it seems QVIVO could garner a healthy early market share. Indeed, Don Goldberg a partner at BlueText a marketing and communications company specializing in the Cloud industry explains, "I would say that consumers have no idea what the cloud means for them.
For example, consumers don't associate Gmail and similar e-mail services with cloud computing. From that perspective, smaller and more nimble companies will come up with better ideas for consumer-friendly services--including photo access, music services, even password and privacy solutions leaving the larger companies in the dust." And potentially scooping up a good bit of the estimated $16.7 billion dollar cloud computing revenue forecast, as per The 451 Group.
QVIVO's disruptive business models seems to be compelling but only time will tell. McCallum explains, "Two, five or even fifty gigabyte plans seem fine for music and documents but when you start adding video into the mix your customers will quickly grow tired of managing their storage limits. We thought we'd change the game with no storage limits." To help them enter the market, a mix of Asia Pacific based angel investors have raised $1M in seed capital. QVIVO is currently undergoing it's first Series A round of funding to accelerate its growth.
But it surely won't be a cake walk for any business planning for success in this industry. According to Drexel University's Ashley Podhradsky, Assistant Professor of Computing and Security Technology, data demonstrates that there are several areas of security concerns that consumers have regarding cloud computing. He says, "consumers are concerned with both physical and logical access security with their data. First, consumers want to be certain that the physical location of their data is secure. Consumers want to be assured that cloud providers are employing and testing their security architecture plans and policies. They are equally concerned about data loss and data leakage, nefarious use of cloud computing resources, and data privacy laws and regulations. Given this, it is my belief that consumers may need more time to build up confidence on cloud use for personal data."
Perhaps, but if the early interest in QVIVO and other Cloud service providers are any indications; the public may not only meet but exceed the strong business forecasts for this hot, new arena for years to come.
Lauren DeLisa Coleman is a digital business strategy and communications consultant, analyst, journalist and speaker specializing in the convergence of Gen X, Y with digital media, particularly mobile technology. She has coined this unique convergent skill set and expertise in the term socio-economic digitalist* . Among some of the most prominent females in the space, she was recently cited as one of the "Top 50 Fabulous Black Women" by BlackBusinessWomenOnline.com . As a consultant, Coleman works with various companies providing strategy, analysis, education, thought-leadership and cultural intelligence as it pertains to the emerging technology arena. .