Welcome to The Cloud 5, our weekly feature where we scour the web searching for the five most intriguing and poignant cloud links we can find.
Before we jump into this week’s links, please have a look at one of our recent blog posts, Survey finds some respondents spending over $500K a month for cloud services. The RightScale annual cloud survey had some interesting data points including the fact some companies were spending beaucoup bucks for cloud services every month, which actually shouldn’t be a surprise at this point.
And without further delay, here we go with this week’s links:
We’ve been thinking about Dropbox all wrong | Bloomberg
There is a line of thinking that Dropbox was once a consumer storage company that shifted to business before its big IPO announcement last week, but the numbers suggest this theory could be wrong. Dropbox might actually still be that consumer company with a small side play for the business end of the market.
Pentagon’s $1 billion cloud deal may signal new era in government buying | Nextgov
The Congress quietly changed the laws around the way government agencies procure services a few years ago, and an unknown Virginia MSP used that change to its advantage to scoop up a billion dollar deal to help manage the migration component of the Pentagon’s cloud deal with Amazon.
Apple confirms it uses Google’s cloud for iCloud | CNBC
Last year there were rumors aplenty that Apple was using Google’s cloud platform for some of its iCloud business, but there was never any confirmation from Apple. This week, however, some eagle-eyed reporter found a reference in an obscure iOS security document published on the Apple website that it was true. Also of note was that previous references to Azure usage were gone.
Alibaba Cloud launches cloud and AI solutions in Europe | IT Pro Portal
Alibaba is doing its level best to be a player in the cloud market in the west. While it has plenty of traction in China (and more broadly in Asia), it has less in Europe and the US. It has been making big efforts recently to change that and this week, it launched some new cloud AI solutions in the EU.
5 Interesting things from Dropbox’s IPO filing | Fortune
Some interesting stuff here. Dropbox is doing pretty well for a pre-IPO SaaS company with sales growing and losses shrinking, but I think the most interesting bit here is Dropbox’s cozy relationship with HPE. In fact, the company spent almost $82 million dollars on HPE equipment and services last year.
Photo Credit: Ron Miller. Used under CC 2.0 license.
