A Better Way to Access Storage
It’s been over a decade since a couple of MIT students, Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi, started Dropbox in 2007.
Although they did not invent cloud storage itself, they would go on to revolutionize the industry by popularizing it for the consumer market with an inventive growth model and intuitive interface. Building a sharing layer and providing mobile access greatly added to their relevance and success in the marketplace.
Unfortunately, not all that much has changed for cloud storage since the early years. Marketing innovations such as addressing personal vs. business users, pricing (unlimited storage, anyone?), and packaging/distribution schemes have come and gone. But cloud storage capabilities are still largely trapped in a 1.0 state. The main consequence of this is that data is still trapped in silos, unable to move easily between storage providers, applications, and machines.
At odrive, we’ve been working tirelessly to move the state of cloud storage technology forward. We’ve definitely made progress, though we feel like our work isn’t done yet. Keep reading to learn more about some of the ways that odrive is enabling a better way to access your storage.
Manage everything in one place
Data sprawl is real. I have stuff everywhere, and not just for work. My personal and project files are everywhere, too, and I don’t want to spend time moving it or consolidating it. But I want to be able to get to it, find things, and reorganize much more easily.
odrive provides multicloud access and the ability to link multiple accounts, even from the same provider. Unified access helps me to be more productive and efficient. I only need one installed client for all of my storage.
I can link many different kinds of storage to odrive, including personal cloud storage, company storage, infrastructure storage, applications (e.g. Slack or Facebook), and servers.
Universal storage capabilities (decoupled from the storage provider!)
Do you remember the days when email clients were built specifically for a particular backend email system? Hopefully not. It sounds silly nowadays… but then again, we still use cloud storage clients tied to a particular cloud storage backend, right?
There should definitely be distinctiveness in cloud storage service offerings with regards to geolocation of data, version history, backend features, cost models, and so forth. But there is no reason why we should be forced to use a particular storage vendor’s client for their storage if it doesn’t have everything that we need.
These are some of the common storage capabilities that odrive provides for all storage connected to your odrive account:
Free Plan:
- Connect unlimited storage on unlimited machines
- Sync with placeholder cloud files to save disk space and bandwidth
- Sharing (weblinks and sync access), managed from one place
- Command line access for scripting and automation
Premium Subscription:
- Direct sync relationships from any folder on your computer to any folder in remote storage
- Backup any folder on any machine to any folder in the cloud
- Advanced sync capabilities like custom exclusion rules, bandwidth throttling, and performance tuning
- Zero-knowledge encryption for any storage
…and a whole lot more.
Really, it doesn’t make sense why you can’t have all of this for any storage.
What’s next?
As you can see, odrive already gives you a unified way to access storage that has evolved beyond 1.0 cloud storage. First, unify access to your storage. And then unlock universal storage capabilities to get more out of your storage investments. It’s a simple idea, but we want to keep pushing it forward to amplify the value of all the storage we use through better access.
The future looks bright, too… with everything from even easier to use zero-knowledge encryption, improved mobility of data, better sharing, deeper levels of collaboration, and more control. We also see opportunities to expand our platform — making it easier to support all storage with a standard storage interface on one side of the platform while providing APIs for everyone to build their own universal storage applications on the other.
You’ll want to stick with us for the ride. If you haven’t signed up yet, click here to join us.
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