Saturday, 28 March 2015

Dropbox and its Lightweight Models and Cost Effective Scalability





This is the last of Tim O’Reilly’s Design Patterns and Business Models. This pattern focuses on Lightweight Models and Cost Effective Scalability. The capability of this pattern is not enough by itself to keep the business continuing without combining the capabilities of other companies to change the demands and platform. The three concepts that are recommended under this category are:
  • Support Lightweight Programing Models 
    • Allows for loosely coupled systems

  • Syndication
    • Not coordination. Services such as RSS and REST-based web services as the End-to-end principle.
  • Design for “hackability” and Remixability
    • The browser’s “View Source” enabled users to copy a web page

There are uncountable websites that implement the business models explained by O’Reilly. The great real life scenario to demonstrate here today is Dropbox. Simply, upload your documents in the Dropbox and get to it from your Desktops, smartphones and tablets. As a cloud service, allows its users to edit uploaded docs, automatically add photos, and even show off videos from anywhere anytime.

In relation with the scale with demand concept, Dropbox users have been increasing constantly. In 2007 as the year was founded, the company launched its business with just over one hundred employees. In the third quarter 2009, more than 2 million users registered and over 45 Million in 2011, while this number has been increased to 100 million users in 2012 and l75 million users in 2013. This quick and tangible increase in number of users with small group of employees can be seen clearly.  The era of scale with demand provides the availability of doing more with less to the company such as:
  • Short time to market
  • Fast Return on Investment
  • Reduce in risk
  • Great adaption



Outsource whenever practical and possible is another best practice, after a user registers, any editable uploaded document can be updated. The user can access the account anytime and anywhere from any device. The capability of this is to make the requested file sharing or source available for group collaboration as an outsource in demand.

Pricing and Revenue Scale Models: The three different pricing lists are:
  • Dropbox for business
    • Au $17 / user / month offers as much storage as the user need, unlimited file recovery, file sharing controls and priority support.
  • Dropbox Pro 
    •  Au $10.99 / month offers 1 TB of space, additional sharing controls and remote wipe
  • Dropbox Basic (Free) 
    •  Au $ 0 (free) offers only 2 GB of space, safe, reliable backup, access from anywhere and simple file sharing. However, this limited space can be upgraded by:
      • Completing the “Get Started” tour – 250MB
      • Linking the account to Facebook account - 125MB 
      •  Joining to Twitter account  provides 125MB
      • Following Dropbox on Twitter account – 125MB
      • Leaving a comment why you love Dropbox – 125MB 
      •  Downloading Mailbox for iOS or Android and linking it with your Google – 1GB 
      •  Inviting friends can – Up to 16 GB


In conclusion, Dropbox is one of the best cloud storage services. Their free version has been enticing millions of user in very short time. This is what Doing More with Less does.


Thanks for taking time to read and please leave a comment.
Posted by at

5 comments:

  1. Anonymous29 March 2015 at 04:24

    Hey Younis,
    As usual a great post. Dropbox is one of the firms, whose growth I have seen very closely. As most of them, I am also using dropbox. Dropbox never stopped to amaze me. Right from the cloud facility and their promotional activities to increase a user's storage, they have been instrumental in achieving that. Do you think Dropbox has attained a saturation stage?

    Thanks,
    Alik

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Unknown30 March 2015 at 19:02

      Hi Abdul,

      Very good question ! . I do not think so. With implementing Tim O'Reilly's patterns (Which is really a great source of Web 2.0 Applications), I think there are heaps of opportunities are available between the companies and user interface to keep them going on and creative. And the aim of all of this is to entice customers to be part of the company. This includes Dropbox as well. As we see they offer variety of options to attract users and even we could see the tangible fact how they advertise their product through existing customers by inviting friends, linking their account to social websites such as Twitter and Facebook. In my opinion, Dropbox is not going to live in hibernation if they use Web 2.0 Applications appropriately. What do you think?

      Thanks,

      Delete
  2. Anonymous29 March 2015 at 06:31

    Hi Younis,

    This is Hussain. Nice post and a good choice to explain lightweight models and cost effective scalability. I also had a look at the previous comment by Alik. So many people out there are using dropbox because their growth is immense and they are providing good features to their users. Also dropbox has various pricing to improve the storage and this directly constitutes to the company's growth.

    Regards,
    Hussian

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Unknown30 March 2015 at 19:13

      Hi Hussain, nice to receive your comment and everything you say is true. Dropbox is not only the product we have been using, but it is one of the best applications I am using so far. Especially sharing folders with a group for the assignment purposes (just one example of many).

      Regards,

      Delete
  3. Anonymous31 March 2015 at 02:07

    Hi Younis,

    First of all, I have to agree with previous comment - this is one excellent post. You’ve explained O’Reilly’s ideas well and you came up with a simple example to support the explanation. We are all familiar with Dropbox, its advantages and its usefulness. What some of us didn’t know was history of its development, so thanks to you for changing that.

    I think that the best thing about using Dropbox to easily present O’Reilly’s ideas about Lightweight Models and the Cost Effective Scalability pattern is the obvious fact that Dropbox isn’t self-sustaining. Also, it is a kind of platform that offers good service with very little self-investment. The creators of the platform are indeed very clever and creative.

    Not only is Dropbox a very smart platform, but the people behind it continue to improve it, and that is precisely the most important reason for its enormous growth. Being accessible from a wide variety of electronic devices is one of its finer qualities as well. What more can I say, when I am also one of those millions happy and registered Dropbox users.

    Another great and familiar example of Lightweight Models and Cost Effective Scalability pattern is eBay. About this example and how does eBay use this pattern you can read here:

    https://jaroodi.wordpress.com/2012/05/11/web-2-0-patterns-lightweight-models-cost-effective-scalability/

    It’s fairly obvious from this blog post how some patterns are really important and how a simple and small thing can make your business grow. That’s why is important to follow up these kind of blogs and learn about the new inventions in the Internet field.

    Since one of the main ideas of this article is “doing more with less”, I will stop complimenting your post now.

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)