Amazon launches Zocalo to compete with Box and Dropbox

sincity · July 10, 2014

Amazon has unveiled an enterprise storage and collaboration service designed to compete with Box, Dropbox, Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive. The service, Amazon Zocalo, allows users to save, send, and collaborate on documents stored in the cloud.

Zocalo users will be able to access the platform via PCs, Macs and most tablet devices, including iPad, Kindle Fire, and Android tablets.

Amazon has given IT administrators the ability to integrate the platform with their corporate directories, so that they can monitor how, where and with whom files are shared and stored.

Amazon Zocalo is available with a 30-day free trial that offers 200 GB of storage per user for up to 50 users. After the trial, Zocalo will be priced at $5 per user per month (around £2.92, AU$5.33), for 200 GB.

Competition

Amazon's main competition in the field is Dropbox, which has been a step ahead of everyone in the enterprise cloud storage space.

In April, Dropbox made its storage offering more attractive by providing users with a means of working together on Office documents including Word, Excel and Powerpoint.

Earlier in the month, Dropbox made Dropbox for Business available to all users, and it also enabled users to access two different online storage compartments: one for personal use, and one for professional.

Box

Box is on the verge of an initial public offering. The company just announced an additional $150 million (around £87.6 million, AU$160 million) in funding, a revenue increase of 94% in the first quarter for 2014 from the same period in 2013.

However, it also reported having lost $38 million (around £22.2 million, AU$40.5 million) for the quarter an increase of $4 million (around £2.3 million, AU$4.26 million) compared with the same quarter the year before.