I find it interesting to see the difference between various software-as-a-service providers out there. The cloud is certainly not a new idea and represents a great big opportunity for both commercial and consumer use. However, there is a big difference between pitching solutions to a consumer audience and using online mediums to drive traffic to a more enterprise base of customers. In particular, video encoding solutions for such groups vary almost as widely as standard file backups. These and other differences create opportunities for new entrants to quickly ramp and beat out competitors who may be ill-equipped to solicit to their audience.
Before we look at differences between cloud video backup solutions in the consumer and commercial space, it is wise to take a look at what are the driving factors between these two groups and how they are accessing these solutions, via the web or otherwise. Let’s start with consumers. Consumers are generally much more fickle and have found ways to cajole the system by uploading family videos to YouTube and sharing them on Facebook and WordPress. These methods, while useful, represent a free or freemium model that most cloud operators would shun like the plague. There are, however, those consumers willing to spend a small monthly fee to have unlimited storage and backup from anywhere. The fees I’ve seen for such have been out-of-this-world ridiculous at times. Memory is cheap and if you think you can charge a lofty sum to a consumer who can go out and buy several terabyte hard drives and backup his content for cheaper, you must be mistaken.
Enterprise cloud backup for videos and other files is a different monster all together and will require several key components to be done properly. First, you must consider the enterprise audience as experts in online storage and backup solutions. They may not be, but they should be seriously considered as such—because many of them have years of experience and expertise in this area. Second, you must consider the commercial clients as cost conscious, but more as partners. They are less fickle, more steady and do not require as much hand-holding in most instances. That said, they will certainly require a great deal more features—maybe not usability—but feature sets will be huge with this crowd.
Selling enterprise video backup solutions to various organizations such as schools, hospitals, museums and libraries represents a completely different monster than pitching your wares to a consumer. Knowing the differences in your audience will be key to revenue generation. A lack of understanding can be lethal.
