ElephantDrive is the latest startup emerging in the consumer and SMB facing online storage market. I had first come across ElephantDrive around the time when Amazon had just launched S3 last year. At that time small but extremely talented teams just like ElephantDrive were getting together to build products for consumers on top of the webservice. In fact ElephantDrive had been working even before that on developing its technology in anticipation of such a storage product launch from either Google or Microsoft. All this is happened around March of last year. In the year since, ElephantDrive has come a long way in terms of its product development and laying out its future strategy. Also they have quickly grown to a team of 9 people in LA, and raised undisclosed amount of funding from angel investors in LA and Intel Capital.
ElephantDrive’s currently plans are very competitive that range from free, to Home Edition, to Professional, and Enterprise Edition. Home Edition, which is the cheapest paid plan gets you unlimited storage space for $9.95/month. Actually it is not just the unlimited storage offering that I am writing about ElephantDrive. ElephantDesktop from ElephantDrive is real deal where lot of resources are being spent by the product team. ElephantDrive will be releasing a new and smart version of the client within the next month. Right now the desktop client gives option to schedule backups(you might have to pay extra for this at other places) and reporting functionality on the uploads/downloads. With the new release ElephantDesktop will intelligently respond to local machine conditions by taking advantage of Intel mobility SDK that gives access to low-level device megtrics such as batteries, memory, CPU, WiFi signal strength, and network connectivity. ElephantDesktop will smartly look at your system resources and determine how much fast it needs to go. The scheduled jobs will be able to power-up your machine, perform backups, and later shutdown the machine by itself. I don’t think any of the major online storage providers is considering these options to enhance user experience.
As for storing data, ElephantDrive does lot more than just dumping data onto S3. ElephantDrive looks at S3 as an option to expand quickly as and when lot of uses hit the service. In fact ElephantDrive maintains atleast 2 copies of your data one of which might be on S3 and other on ElephantDrive’s servers.
Competitive pricing and active development pushes me in favor of ElephantDrive as compared to Bingodisk which hasn’t seen much of innovation lately.
Links:
ElephantDrive
March 14, 2007 at 5:04 pm |
[...] I Herd it From StartupSquad ElephantDrive got a great review today over at StartupSquad. I was particularly pleased to see that they mentioned the upcoming release of the smart version of ElephantDesktop–further evidence that this company is focused on the people who will actually be using their services, and that they are subsequently invested in finding creative ways to enhance the experience. [...]
March 15, 2007 at 6:26 pm |
I am a fan of mozy.com which has great features and runs in the background respecting CPU usage. 2gb for free and unlimited for $5/mo
March 16, 2007 at 6:50 pm |
[...] Here’s the weekend roundup of some of the recent coverage elsewhere in the technology/Silicon Valley press of Southern California startups. Guy Kawasaki profiles MatchActivity (Los Angeles). StartupSquad profiles ElephantDrive (Los Angeles). The alarm:clock comments on the VMIX (San Diego) deal. Slacker (San Diego) gets mention on TechCrunch, VentureBeat, CNET and everyone else. Idealab’s Aptera gets techie attention at engadget. [...]
March 29, 2007 at 3:41 pm |
[...] This concept is also behind the updated features of the ElephantDesktop application, which, as mentioned previously by StartupSquad, “will intelligently respond to local machine conditions by taking advantage of Intel mobility SDK that gives access to low-level device megtrics such as batteries, memory, CPU, WiFi signal strength, and network connectivity”. It’s yet another example of an idea whose execution is via technology, but, whose genesis and outcome are to be found in the human element, and how it might be better served by the technology that it has created. And artificial or not, that’s a form of intelligence whose time has definitely arrived. [...]
April 3, 2007 at 11:20 pm |
[...] One thing I am sure about is the sharing and utilization of system resources by Secobackup. Is the product smart enough to slow down while machine is being actively used or shut itself down when battery goes low? This area is something that ElephantDrive has been working on and can prove to be very useful to users. I would get confirmation on this from Secobackup team. [...]