CEO Reflections

Cloud this and Cloud thatCloud ennui is setting in. Every software vendor today has a cloud offering. In fact, even at Egnyte when we launched the product in 2008, we called it "On Demand File Server" and then cloud became hot. Sure enough we rechristened the product as "Cloud File Server." Same product, but better SEO traffic to the site. Even software solutions that have nothing to do with the software as a service model are now "cloud ready."What does a SMB business do to sift through this confusion and do they really care? As a business, what they really care about is reduced expense and a solution that adapts to them rather than they adapt to it. Most importantly, the end user does not care where or how the file is served, as long as they can access it securely and with any device. Yet, they don't want to pay the performance penalty of the cloud or live with the fear of no internet connectivity. In essence, they want a hybrid cloud (sorry, I have to use that word) which gives you the best of both worlds.The word "Cloud" will eventually be replaced with a new flavor of the month or say the year, just like Web 2.0, B2B, etc. have been in the past. What will remain is the true value proposition of the solution. In our case - File Sharing for Business.One company I admire for not using the word "Cloud" on their site is Dropbox. The focus is really on the problem they solve. We should all learn from that.