Between the Lines

Larry Dignan, Andrew Nusca and Rachel King

Dear Acer: Your cloud strategy way late, way me-too

By | January 8, 2012, 4:09pm PST

Summary: If all Acer can come up with is a clone of other cloud services, the company has serious problems.

Acer kicked off the International Consumer Electronics Show with an ultrabook heavy lineup—no surprise—and a proprietary cloud service, which is a bit of a head scratcher.

CNET’s Roger Cheng was on scene for that Acer press conference and reported the following on the cloud strategy (Techmeme).

Acer hopes to set its products apart through its proprietary AcerCloud service, which is designed to let customers sync files across multiple Acer products. In doing so, Acer is trying to emulate other major technology players such as Google, Apple, and Amazon, which rely heavily on cloud services themselves.

Acer demonstrated the three services that will initially be available on AcerCloud when it launches in the second quarter: PicStream, a photo-sharing service, AcerCloud docs for documents, and clear.fi Media for music. For PicStream and AcerCloud, the files will be stored online for 30 days. The service is expected to run on future Windows devices down the line.

Boy that’s a tough sell. If all Acer can come up with is a clone of other cloud services, the company has serious problems.

Related: CES 2012: Acer announces Aspire Timeline Ultra laptops and world’s thinnest Ultrabook, Aspire S5

Acer doesn’t have the brand to compete with Amazon, Apple and Google. Raise your hand if you have an Acer laptop and tablet? Thought so. Acer lacks the brand loyalty to really convince consumers that connecting the company’s devices is really so great. Acer looks way late and way too me too. Why would you put your docs on AcerCloud when other services Box, DropBox and Evernote can work on whatever device you have?

Also from CNET:

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Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and SmartPlanet as well as Editorial Director of ZDNet's sister site TechRepublic.

Disclosure

Larry Dignan

Larry Dignan has nothing to disclose. He doesn’t hold investments in the technology companies he covers.

Biography

Larry Dignan

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and SmartPlanet as well as Editorial Director of ZDNet's sister site TechRepublic. He was most recently Executive Editor of News and Blogs at ZDNet. Prior to that he was executive news editor at eWeek and news editor at Baseline. He also served as the East Coast news editor and finance editor at CNET News.com. Larry has covered the technology and financial services industry since 1995, publishing articles in WallStreetWeek.com, Inter@ctive Week, The New York Times, and Financial Planning magazine. He's a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism and the University of Delaware.

For daily updates, follow Larry on Twitter.

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RE: Dear Acer: Your cloud strategy way late, way me-too
virthddman 13th Jan
Acer Cloud, Amazon and iCloud are great services.
Also in the cloud, access all of your computers with 2x for mobile devices.
get yours at:

www.2x.com

Replace Citrix or other virtual environments with 2X's XG Virtual Server.
Download a demo today.
0 Votes
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You know the cloud is this ethereal blob
Dietrich T. Schmitz * Your Linux Advocate 8th Jan
But ultimately, we don't know where it will lead.

Winners and losers mostly, with the winners absorbing the losers and the process repeats itself annually.

Will the Cloud become a Grid Utility in the future. Simply plug in and pay your utility for power--the same being what I mean for the Cloud. Yes?
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@Dietrich T. Schmitz * Your Linux Advocate

No .. I don't think so because all the major players already serve their customers. Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon and, I'm sure companies that serve Chinese patrons already have cloud services well established. All these business concerns are not about to give up control of their cloud infrastructure to a centralized cloud grid authority.
Every company need to provide to its customers an out of a box experience. Today's flavor is "cloud." It's customer's choice to pick up a different option later. Acer is doing right for a non-savvy user.
@Rigel.628

No, they aren't. They're fragmenting the cloud market into something OEM specific.

There's no reason for this - there are already well established cloud providers. Use one of them instead of trying to re-invent the wheel with something OEM specific.
" If all Acer can come up with is a clone of other cloud services, the company has serious problems.."

This article is non-sense..

There is nothing wrong for Acer to provide cloud services for its customers.

Could the author please enlighten all of us about another service other than 'cloud' to sync photos and documents.
0 Votes
+ -
@owlnet

No, it's a completely sensible article with a completely valid point.

"There is nothing wrong for Acer to provide cloud services for its customers. "

Yes, actually, there is. They're re-inventing the wheel and fragmenting the market. There's nothing wrong with using already existing services.

"Could the author please enlighten all of us about another service other than 'cloud' to sync photos and documents."

There is no service named "cloud." "Cloud" is a description, not a service.

Dropbox actually does exactly that. It syncs documents, photos, and most other file types. And it works on all devices: PCs, Macs, iPhones, Android devices, you name it, there's a way to use Dropbox with it. At the very least, you can always access it on a web browser as well, as it's a cloud based service.

Could you please enlighten us all about how something Acer specific is going to help people any more than any other cloud service out there, hmm?
"and a proprietary cloud service, which is a bit of a head scratcher."

Eh, yuck. No. Just no. The last thing we need today is fragmented OEM specific "clouds."

I have a custom built PC, an iPhone, and an HP netbook. If, say, HP decided to do this as well, it would be useless because my main PC is non-OEM and my phone is Apple.

"Why would you put your docs on AcerCloud when other services Box, DropBox and Evernote can work on whatever device you have?"

Agreed. Dropbox works on all of them, Evernote works on all of them, Google mail/calendar works on all of them, and Toodledo (a TODO list app) works at all of them.

We have solutions that work on everything - there's no point in using something specific to an OEM at this point.
Acer Cloud, Amazon and iCloud are great services.
Also in the cloud, access all of your computers with 2x for mobile devices.
get yours at:

www.2x.com

Replace Citrix or other virtual environments with 2X's XG Virtual Server.
Download a demo today.

Join the conversation!

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