I've been watching a strange migration recently. Friends of mine who are none Cloud based having been using a corporate shared drive for years. Everyone is familiar with this concept. Access your files from everywhere and so on. After introducing a couple of friends to DropBox it's almost as if their lives have changed. The big reason? It's easy to use and they can share files/folders with anyone. The simplicity behind DropBox is incredible. Why is it that no one has come out with anything comparable? I think DropBox's success can be pretty clearly understood by this comment on Quora.
The question?
Why is DropBox More Popular Than Other Tools With SImilar Functionality?
Michael Wolfe, on Quora
"Well, let's take a step back and think about the sync problem and what the ideal solution for it would do:
-There would be a folder. -You'd put your stuff in it. - It would sync.
"They built that."
(Thanks to Daring Fireball for the info)
What does this mean in the world of the Cloud? Simplicity rules. Although traditional shared files/folders can do nearly the same thing it requires a small learning curve. What we're learning more every day is that the apps and programs that are succeeding are the ones that are bare bones. Accomplish a task quickly and simply and do it cheaply. We're moving quickly into a world of high specialization and advanced segmentation. Slowly independent Cloud apps are chipping away at the base of robust suite options.