Dropbox CEO, Drew Houston, is about to facilitate a meaningful donation to his favorite cause, but he doesn’t know it yet. More about this in the last paragraph…

Dropbox is in an enviable position. The company is smokin! It’s so hot, that Forbes magazine calls it Tech’s Hottest Startup. So hot, that Steve Jobs tried to acquire it. So hot, that when anointed by the MacMeister with a personal audience, 28-year-old founder Drew Houston snubbed his proverbial nose at the offer. *

Dropbox: Atop it’s game… But what about Future Shock?

What does Dropbox sell?
Dropbox sells cloud storage services, including backup, synchronization and file distribution. They are arguably king the market leader, but they have plenty of competition: Apple’s new iCloud, SugarSync, SkyDrive (Microsoft), LiveDrive, Google Docs, Box.net, FolderShare and a growing list of wannabees. Without getting into the nitty-gritty, let’s just say that if you’re not using Dropbox or a similar service now, you will do so soon. There have been criticisms that the cloud storage isn’t as secure for businesses as it needs to be and if there was a hack then businesses would be left vulnerable, especially when those business relay on something similar to this Sales quote software to store invoices and quotes for their business interactions. This is why more businesses are deciding to store information in a virtual data room, a more secure storage method than using cloud. If you’re worried about your businesses privacy then you can look for virtual data room 2019 reviews to see if it is suitable for your business. Services like Dropbox and iCloud are looking into ways to make storage more secure for businesses as a way to combat this.

What can cloud storage do for me?
You are probably familiar with Carbonite and Mozy. These vendors market clouds as safety nets, constantly backing up your PC over the internet, as you work. On the other hand, Google Docs makes collaboration easier and more efficient because users spread far apart can work on the same document at the same time – and without worrying about who has the latest version. These are all ancillary benefits of cloud computing at best. Since the concept is still in its infancy, they focus on a simple and easily digestible pitch.

But clouds offer much more! With data in the cloud, documents, photos and music are always available, backed up, in sync and safe – no matter where you travel or what gadget is handy. Files don’t depend on equipment that you own or carry, so you can travel light and with constant access to your business, media and memories. Much as predicted by Asimov in The Last Question, using a personal data cloud is like having your brain in ever-present hyperspace. They are also highly useful when you have need for collaboration in your line of work. For instance, those working in video production might have use for an ultra-fast file sharing solution in order to send and receive files when necessary.

Dropbox is the convergence leader. What’s wrong with that?
When startups reach a phase that I call investor frenzy, founders and early investors inevitably get the “not invented here” bug, or the “we are obviously doing it right” bug. But smart directors swat away cocky bugs of success until the company reaches the profit phase and, of course, the ROI phase. They also keep a keen eye on competitors and even tiny startups to see if someone has come up with a startling new way to improve service, boost revenue or reduce expenses.

What’s new in cloud technology?
“What’s New” is a tectonic shift in technology from centralized, data center storage to distributed peer storage. It’s a dramatic architectural enhancement that I call Ellery’s Reverse Distributed Data cloud [RDDC]. While I can’t take the credit for all that is about to unfold, I was first to propose it three years ago. This past August, I blogged about the concept at AWildDuck.

RDDC changes dynamics of everything that matters in storage: cost, security and speed and even environmental impact – all in the right direction. As each user adds inexpensive storage to their own home or business network (the same drives that they previously used to store their working data or backups), a central “traffic cop” uses this worldwide, massively redundant, distributed storage network as if it were a “RAID-10,000” drive array. The Result: As long as 33% of users don’t turn off their storage devices at the same time, everyone’s data is available instantly, securely and without risk of errors or hacks.

Incredible? You Bet! Want more? Of course!
Consider the return data throughput. That’s the rate at which downloads from these many different storage drives arrive into your PC when restoring a backup or even when using a global cloud array as your main drive. You might think that spreading your data, bytewise across lots of slow uplinks would result in data recovery at a snail’s pace. You would be wrong. Even the programmers who understand the math are astounded at the RDT. Even if many drives in your personal cloud are heavily fragmented or poke along at the 3rd tier connection speed of a rural carrier, incoming throughput sizzles at blistering, heart-pounding speed. Why? Because inbound data is staged in the cloud as a torrent from a massively parallel cluster – and not as a serial stream from one peer.

There’s more. While all of this is happening the uplink channel is not idle. Your global cloud array dispatches data around the world with predictive caching, based on new research into the distribution of media across disparate platforms.

Should I Care?
While the architecture of remote storage may seem a geeky detail, the fallout is a litany of benefits to users and a massive windfall for the first provider’s to get with the program. They will enjoy a 90% reduction in operational expenses, while customers experience a blistering bump in speed and meaningful intangibles like fault tolerance associated with massive redundancy.

What vendors are rolling out this new technology?
Symform is already offering RDDC. SpaceMonkey has not yet announced, but it’s two founders in Salt Lake City (both from EMC) have an even more compelling model. They’re lining up investors now. They get it and the angels are starting to take notice!

These tiny startups and a few others have a big edge on their well-funded brethren, because they are already on top of RDDC. If the challenge is not rapidly met by Dropbox and SugarSync, the new kids will sweep the market.

What’s the risk to the established players? Will they catch up?
Cloud computing for the masses is rapidly becoming a crowded market. Massive consolidation will come in a year. Only a few companies will be left standing, companies like hostiserver.com should be fine because they already provide their own cloud computing solutions at great rates. Most of the names entering the market today, and even some established brands won’t survive nor even be acquired. They’ll just die. A few fortunate startups will cash out, because of their early implementation of RDDC. My bet is with cloud providers that move quickly into massively distributed data clouds. They will be healthy and profitable. If Dropbox gets it and moves quickly to seize the day, they will very likely come out on top.

Drew Houston: In the catbird seat, but for how long?

Does Drew know about RDDC?
He might. More likely, he considered it briefly and then dismissed it. Even a bright individual can overlook an elegant solution to an unrecognized problem. (i.e. reducing expenses dramatically while boosting data security).