What can “the cloud” do?
You’ve heard about “the cloud” and perhaps you’ve ignored all of the hype, but trust us, it’s just online storage and it’s worth the hype. One cloud solution businesses are turning to is the streamlined, easy to use (even for the non-tech inclined) CX.com which is a cloud storage and data file management system that provides users with a secure, stable, scalable platform to backup, synchronize, share, and manage their documents, photos and music, videos across all of their devices – which includes desktops, laptops, netbooks, and mobile devices (iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch, Android, and coming soon to BlackBerry).
In January 2011, the company launched their “Proof of Concept” that was supposed to be a testing ground and allow the company to bring on a few thousand customers, but it very quickly got the company to around 500,000 customers and became “unwieldy,” they tell AGBeat. In April last year, they completely rewrote everything (clients, services, integration, storage, etc.) to build a new platform for stability, security and scalability/growth.
The new platform launched in early October and they have been performing rolling releases nearly weekly to add new functions and to tune their systems. This January, CX released their Android/Kindle Fire clients and will soon release some asynchronous and possibly synchronous communications ability layered on top of existing services.
The newest feature: Group Chat to Cloud
One of the newest features is an extremely useful tool for small businesses, particularly those managing virtual teams:
A shift in the company
CX had adapted their offering as user behavior has changed from people uploading and storing music and pictures to sharing files with friends and family, and finally to their life ecosystem partners like lawyers, accountants, team members, etc.
The company is focusing on collaboration tools, giving users complete control on when and how their content is shared, be it through public or private individual shares to full collaboration in teams through “CX Groups” as demonstrated in the video above.
There is a free version of CX.com, and even the most expensive option (outside of enterprise) is only $24.99 per month, so it is reasonable compared to competitors, given the group offering built in to CX and expanding offering.
The company, with offices in Phoenix/Scottsdale, Palo Alto, Calif. and Buenos Aires, Argentina is backed by Hanna Capital and Tomorrow Ventures. The company left Alpha in early January 2011 and within weeks was adding 15,000 new users a week to most recently over 25,000 users per week.
Photo tour of CX
Click any image to enlarge and note that some pictures are of the iPhone experience, others are iPad, others are the web interface:
