Fighting talk today from Vineet Jain, CEO of file storage and collaboration vendor Egnyte. Says Jain:
Cloud storage has really become a race to the bottom at this point. I would not be surprised if the pricing on storage eventually hit $0. We are moving into a new stage in the evolution of the file sync and storage space. It is no longer about the amount of space being used, but how you are accessing your files and what you can do with them
Following on from the news of Google’s massive price cut for Drive customers, and expected similar moves from other vendors, are we indeed seeing a race to the bottom? And if so, how many vendors will go to the wall in the process?
I agree with Jain that value-add is the real… value here and that raw storage will become simply a utility. But like other utilities, there is still a value, and hence a price, to the raw commodity item.
As such I don’t see storage really going to zero, what I think we’re seeing is simply a race to get scale and customer numbers as a buffer against the coming storms.
Time will tell….
