At its first annual conference in San Fransisco, Dropbox (DBX) announced a new goal for the company, along with a new set of tools and services. DBX doesn’t want to just back up your saved data anymore, but be your primary source for data storage.
Called Dropbox Platform, the cloud storage service functions much like Apple’s iCloud, except on any device and any platform that wants to support it.
Dropbox is in a prime position to pull this off. With already over 175 million users and over a billion files synced every day, Dropbox has become a much bigger part of our techno culture than many would have first thought.
Getting developers on board
Back in February, DBX released Sync API; a tool for developers that lets apps and games save data to DBX directly, instead of to a device’s hard drive. What this means is that Dropbox users could be in the middle of a game, save it on one device, and then pick up where they left off on another. You can even jump from an Android tablet to an iPhone; syncing between devices from the same manufacturer is not required.
The same works for utility apps and contacts. You can sync to-do lists and phone numbers across multiple devices by saving to the cloud. Thanks to the actual app still residing on the actual hard drive, a constant internet connection isn’t necessary; saved files can just sync back up the next time the device comes back online.
Dropbox Platform is essentially a suite of tools designed to work over the Sync API. The idea is to make replacing hard drives with DBX syncing even easier for its over 100 000 devs to include in their products.
On your end
Dropbox has traditionally been used for things like documents and pictures (and even then only for backing them up). Now it could potentially totally replace a hard drive for a huge amount of local content.
Mailbox, an Email app recently acquired by Dropbox, now even lets you assign Dropbox files as attachments to be downloaded locally at the other end as if they were a regularly attached file. This brings upload time down to basically nil and saves a lot of effort on the receiving end. Where the other user once had to manually retrieve the attached file via Dropbox.
Not a hard drive killer
From the looks of things, DBX isn’t trying to replace everything on your hard drive. An app or game that saves its data to Dropbox would still need to be installed locally on each device in question; only the saved data will go to the cloud. Streaming an entire program from the cloud isn’t really yet viable with modern internet networks.
For the most part, saved data is an insignificant portion of a program’s overall size. This is especially the case with games and document/note-taking programs.
The real benefit here is the unified experience that can be created across multiple devices from a number of different manufacturers and operating systems. Where services like iCloud can offer a similar experience between Apple gadgets, Dropbox doesn’t aim restrict you in your product choices. With no hardware products itself, DBX is in the perfect position to offer a comprehensive and objective cross-platform syncing service without favoring one piece of hardware at the expense of another.
Via Dropbox
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