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01/01/13 | Uncategorized

Top 5 Cloud Predictions For 2013

In 2012, SugarSync saw a dramatic increase in customers who came to us via our mobile apps.

By Laura Yecies (CEO, SugarSync)

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.

Prediction 1: 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.

Prediction 2: 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.

Prediction 3: 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.

Prediction 4: 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.

Prediction 5: 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.

This post was originally posted at The Kitchen Sync.

Women 2.0 readers: What guiding trends in the Cloud are you forecasting for 2013? Let us know in the comments.

About the guest blogger: Laura Yecies is CEO of SugarSync, makers of the award-winning SugarSync online data back-up and storage, syncing and file sharing service. She is a consumer software and Internet services industry veteran with nearly two decades of experience leading top consumer brands such as ZoneAlarm, Yahoo and Netscape. Laura blogs at The Kitchen Sync about work, family, travel and other activities converging, and the lessons learned along the way. Follow her on Twitter at @lyecies.

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