Posts Tagged ‘cloud storage’

27th October
2011
written by simplelight

As unstructured file data increasingly resides in cloud file systems, there is a large component that is still missing: Drag & Drop.

Currently, it is not possible to drag a file from Box.net to Salesforce.com or any other cloud service, without first downloading the file to my desktop and then re-uploading it. This problem is compounded on mobile devices such as the iPad because there is no easily accessible local storage or ‘Desktop’ equivalent.

Solving this problem will be more of an engineering challenge than meets the eye. Every cloud service has implemented their own storage protocol and folder system. Second, there is the even larger problem of authentication. Hopefully it will soon be possible to easily tile two browser windows and drag from one cloud service to another. Until then, we will keep on downloading and re-uploading.

Postscript: I have concluded that a single online repository for all my files is a pipe-dream. As the Microsoft monopoly is broken apart, there is going to be increasing fragmentation of cloud services.