Ubuntu One: Canonical Raising Storage Limit
Canonical is preparing to raise the storage limit on Ubuntu One, based on beta tester feedback from those who are using the online storage system. Longer term, Canonical also is listening closely to user feedback requesting Ubuntu One support for Windows, Mac OS X and Apple iPhones. Here’s the update.
Ubuntu One is a cloud service that allows Ubuntu users to share and sync files across their Ubuntu systems. The service, set to officially launch around the time Ubuntu 9.10 debuts in late October 2009, is free for up to 2GB of storage but costs US$10.00 per month for users who want up to 10GB of storage. WorksWithU Contributing Blogger Christopher Tozzi recently wrote about his own use of Ubuntu One.
Apparently, some beta testers told Canonical Ubuntu One needed a higher storage limit in order to compete effectively against rival SaaS storage and cloud services. Canonical now plans to raise the limit in time for the Ubuntu One launch this month, though the new storage limit is yet to be disclosed, according to Ubuntu One Product Manager Matt Griffin.
Update, Oct. 1, 3:58 p.m. eastern: Griffin just emailed me. It’s official. The paid storage limit will rise to 50GB priced at US$10 per month.
Beyond Ubuntu
Canonical also is listening closely to Ubuntu One user requests for Windows, Mac OS X and iPhone support. As currently designed, the Ubuntu One beta only supports Ubuntu 9.04 or greater.
Short term, Canonical’s top Ubuntu One priorities are:
- (A) ensuring the back-end infrastructure — built atop Ubuntu Server Edition — is ready to go for launch, including scaling the system across Canonical’s own data center infrastructure plus Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3).
- (B) optimizing for Ubuntu users.
If there truly is near-term demand for cross-platform support, Canonical hopes third-party developers will fill that void and do the porting work. Out on Launchpad and other forums, “a few people have chimed in and said they’re interested in doing [cross-platform] development, but we haven’t seen anything concrete yet,” says Griffin.
If third-party developers don’t port Ubuntu One to Windows, Mac OS X and Apple iPhone, Canonical may “revisit the discussion at the beginning of next year [2010],” adds Griffin.
Money Matters
In the meantime, Griffin says Ubuntu One has “tens of thousands” of beta testers, though he declines to say how many testers opted for the free version and how many opted for the paid version.
In terms of Ubuntu One revenue generation, “We have some goals but we don’t have the statistics yet to validate those goals,” says Griffin. “We do want it to be a self-sustaining service.” Translation: There’s a business plan for Ubuntu One, but Canonical isn’t quite ready to disclose hard numbers with bloggers.
Ready, Set, Go
Overall, Griffin says Ubuntu One is go for launch later this month. And he says the service will include “additional features” at launch, including the ability to synchronize Evolution contacts. Canonical also is kicking around some concepts that may let “free” users test “paid” features for a window of time, he adds.
Ultimately, Griffin asserts, Ubuntu One will offer a great “out of box” experience that’s as simple as launching the client and authenticating the desktop.
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I don’t think you can expect UbuntuOne to be a self-sustaining revenue generator while its still in beta. It’s a bit premature to ask the question now. The question will be most appropriate around the time of 10.04 launch after the service has been out of beta for a release cycle. I would not be surprised if the real driving timescale for UbuntuOne was the LTS release.
Some followup questions:
Is Canonical working with OEM partners to bundle paid UbuntuOne subscriptions in with OEM purchases?
Could you reach out to the people behind DropBox and see if they have stats on the number of Ubuntu users of their service to put Canonical’s “tens of thousands” into context?
-jef
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Jef: Thanks for the follow-up questions. I’ll keep them in mind as our industry interviews continue.
I agree: It’s too soon to expect Ubuntu One to generate substantial revenue or be self-sustaining. But you (and other readers) have inspired me to make sure we always ask financial questions during interviews.
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Joe:
Here’s some context about UbuntuOne Beta uptake from Ubuntu’s on popcon utility statistics.
http://popcon.ubuntu.com/by_inst
rank name inst vote old recent
————————————————
4757 nautilus-dropbox 21861 1855 18608 1393
6507 ubuntuone-client 10705 1752 3027 5925
More Ubuntu users are dropbox installed than ubuntuone-client.
More Ubuntu users are active users (vote column) than users of ubuntuone-client.
Caveats apply of course. Both of these packages have incredibly tiny install bases. network-manager shows 1175882 installs.. putting both dropbox and ubuntuone below 2% relative to the number of counted network-manager installs. There’s a lot of room for growth for both.
Column Reference:
# is the package name;
# is the number of people who installed this package;
# is the number of people who use this package regularly;
# is the number of people who installed, but don’t use this package regularly;
# is the number of people who upgraded this package recently;
It should be pointed out that popcon stats won’t be a good relative interest metric in the future because starting with karmic ubutonone-client will be installed by default.. and the default status will skew the comparison. Even now these numbers are somewhat skewed in favor of UbuntuOne by the pre-release Karmic installs. So if anything popcon is currently overestimating the interest of UbuntuOne in the userbase because of those default installs. Once Karmic is released, the ubuntuone-client installs will shoot up to the level of the network-manager installs.. but it will no longer be indicative of user interest in the same way it is now.
Note also that designation involves comparing file ctime and atime and its not strictly a depiction of deliberate usage by a user. If a daemon, installed by default, gets automatically started as part of the desktop session without explicit user interaction such a default configuration would show up as recent activity even though the user is unaware of it performing any action in the background. I don’t know if either nautilus-dropbox or ubuntuone-client does this or not..but its something to be aware of if you want to understand the popcon numbers once ubuntuone-client becomes a default installed package for pretty much everyone and skews the results.
Since popcon is opt-in it can’t be used to refute or support the claim that there are “tens of thousands” of active beta tests, so I won’t even try. But I think right now, its reasonable to draw the conclusion that ubuntuone beta is no more popular as optional package as dropbox as drop box is.
It will be interesting to see how Dropbox responds to Canonical’s encroachment on their storage services business by making ubuntuone-client a default application.
-jef
Dropbox recently claimed to pass 2 million users. If even 1% are linux users then that dwarfs the Ubuntu One users.
furicle:
Can you provide a solid reference for the 2 million user claim.
The popcon numbers I give above don’t really show dropbox users on Ubuntu “dwarfing” UbuntuOne users even though the number of dropbox users in the popcon stats is ~ 1% of that 2 million claim.
Now the question really becomes… if the Ubuntu users of dropbox really only represent 1% or so of the paying dropbox customers will Dropbox care at all if Canonical gobbles them up by making ubuntuone a default client application? Can Canonical do a better job of enticing Ubuntu users to pay for this sort of online backup service than DropBox?
There’s also deeper discussion here. If Canonical and other OS distributors roll in their own service offerings with their own client interfaces into the default application offerings are they acting to exclude ISV’s like dropbox? This is exactly the sort of bundling Microsoft got in trouble with by bundling IE. In the future, will Canonical allow OEMs to uninstall ubuntuone-client and replace it with the dropbox client as still advertise it as Ubuntu? Or is Canonical going to require ubuntuone-client always be made available out of the box?
-jef
I think Ubuntu One is a little bit of “too little, too late”. It’s a nice service, no doubt, but it’s way behind Dropbox at this point. I already have clients that allow me to synch between my Ubuntu machine, my Windows PC at work, and now my iPhone for on the go.
I think, oddly enough, is that the saving grace of Ubuntu One may be, if it can, the ability to work with KDE. Other than that, so far Dropbox pretty much does everything at least as well, and is more widely available.
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UbuntuOne will capture the new users. If its featured when the OS is installed new users will most likely try that before even finding out about Dropbox if they don’t know about it. I think it will grow over time and also make Ubuntu more attractive. I doubt it will pull many away from Dropbox however.
I also think they should hold off on the clients for the other OS’s. This is where Linux screws itself up. The way to get people onto Linux in masses is to offer something that they’d really want but HAVE to have Linux to use. I know it sounds opposed to the point of being open. But you have to face reality. If you keep giving the must have features away to the other OS’s then people will simply stick with their OS AND enjoy the feature. For Canonical this is about money so they will need to think about this.
Update: Canonical’s Griffin just emailed me. It’s official. The paid storage limit will rise to 50GB priced at US$10 per month.
I will also read the comment trail above to make sure we’re tracking reader feedback for future articles.
-jp
Here’s an article about the 2 million dropbox users claim:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/24/dropbox-reaches-2-million-users-continues-to-grow/
Also the $10/mo for 50GB of storage is the same price as Dropbox (well, $9.99/mo for Dropbox), although Dropbox also offers 25GB ($7.99/mo) and 100GB ($19.99/mo).
Why doesn’t Ubuntu One just do some good old-fashioned price undercutting?
Why would I do that when i can use Microsoft’s SkyDrive which gives me 25GB for FREE?
@Phil:
There’s no doubt it will capture new users. But will enough of those users being paying users to have this be a self supporting business?
Canonical is backing up this service with Amazon’s S3 which has both storage and data transfer costs. Unless Canonical has a special deal with Amazon, a lot of non-paying users of Canonical’s service could end up costing Canonical money. $0.10 a GB transferred in or out adds up quick.. on top of $0.10 a GB/month storage costs just for holding the data.
How much money would Canonical end up paying Amazon if I signed up for a free UbuntuOne and did nothing but sync randomized data in and out non-stop from a month to Ubuntu virtual machines running on my home computer?
Now of course I wouldn’t do that, I’m just making a point. Freebie users are going to cost Canonical real money. Are there enough people out there in the Ubuntu userspace willing to pay for this optional service compared to other offerings? I’m not sure there are. I think Canonical will need to find a way to bundle the price of say 3 or 6 months of service into OEM offerings as a value-add at the time of system purchase instead of hoping that enough people will pay for this after the fact.
-jef
Hilary@13: I think Canonical is depending on some brand loyalty from Ubuntu users who want to try (and potentially pay for) Ubuntu One. Canonical can always lower Ubuntu One prices in the future; but setting the price too low to start would have been a mistake since “raising” prices would have been difficult.
Don@14: Until I see and test the fully developed Ubuntu One solution I won’t really have an answer for you.
Jef@15: I don’t have any details on the $$$ deal (if any) between Amazon and Canonical. But to your point, I will continue to ask financial Q’s during our interviews and calls.
[…] Ubuntu One: Canonical Raising Storage Limit Apparently, some beta testers told Canonical Ubuntu One needed a higher storage limit in order to compete effectively against rival SaaS storage and cloud services. Canonical now plans to raise the limit in time for the Ubuntu One launch this month, though the new storage limit is yet to be disclosed, according to Ubuntu One Product Manager Matt Griffin. […]
[…] Canonical Raising Ubuntu One Storage Limit Friday, October 2, 2009 By jfeedor Canonical is preparing to raise the storage limit on Ubuntu One, based on beta tester feedback from those who are using the online storage system. Longer term, Canonical also is listening closely to user feedback requesting Ubuntu One support for Windows, Mac OS X and Apple iPhones. Here’s the update. […]
Apple iPhone or is it, maybe, iPodTouch, too?
iPhone implies “over the mobile phone network”
iPodTouch does have WiFi connectivity – if it is the WiFi and not the mobile phone network then the iPodTouch should work also, eh? Ubuntu One being on WiFi makes more sense to me than being on the mobile phone network.
Do you know which is being considered?
Joe:
Amazon’s publicly available pricing makes for a good starting point for analysis.
$0.10 for each GB stored.
$0.10 for each GB transferred in or out.
(These price points are actually volume discounted for high traffic users)
So lets say that in any given month an average non-paying user moves 1/3 of a GB into and out of the S3 backed storage. With Amazon’s public pricing that one non-paying user cost Canonical $0.10 a month. I think that’s not an unreasonable starting point for analysis (and it makes the numbers nice).
Just using that as a ballpark For every 100 non-paying customers UbuntuOne will need to have 1 paying customer just to cover the Amazon transaction costs not including the costs incurred by the expected higher volume usage of the paying customer. Can Canonical get that 1 paying customer for each 100 non-paying customers? I’m not sure… not without introductory service bundling with the help of OEM partners.
And of course, once you account for canonical’s own staffing the ratio of non-paying to paying customers must shrink even more.
-jef
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Would be wonderful if it worked too… I set up the free account, copied 1.8Gb into the directory (into thousands of subdirectories) and Ubuntu One didn’t manage to upload even one file, just parts of the directory structure. It did however take over my processor up to 80% and kept spinning my hard drive. I’d love to use a proper service like this though.
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I’m still in the too little, too late camp. First, they basically use the exact same setup as Dropbox (Ubuntu can’t even use its own cloud system, it just uses EC2 and S3), it isn’t as robust an it isn’t cross platform.
The thing with DropBox is that you can get all kinds of addons (http://wiki.getdropbox.com/DropboxAddons). Until Canonical actually releases anything for UbuntuOne, I don’t see this being a worthy alternative. Especially if I can’t access it from my mobile or other computers.
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I had wanted Canonical to do this much earlier, so I’m in the better late than never camp. I use Dropbox and the cross platform support I don’t need, although I have it installed on my iPod Touch which is handy. Nevertheless, cross platform support is going to increase the take up. But in the short term it makes sense to make it robust and feature unique for Ubuntu machines first. It’s early days yet and once they get the foundation sorted out, the features and support for other platforms will come.
So now both Ubuntu One and DropBox are $10/mo for 50GB of storage. I have been using SpiderOak, which works great with Ubuntu, and is $10/mo for 100GB: http://bit.ly/kcUzr
Will UbuntuOne be incorporated into the UEC, so that behind the firewall enterprises could use it as another way to implement DRP, could be an option, thanks
I have unlimited storage on Mozy for $4.99 per mo. Unfortunately, they do not support Linux at this time.
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Sometimes I have to work in Windows/Mac for Word or Photoshop. It would be great to add support for Mac amp; iPhone!
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I subscribed to Ubuntu One to see if it could help me with some voluntary tasks I do which involve file exchange with a journal designer. Unfortunately he’s not on Ubuntu, nor is anyone else I might want to share with. I can’t see it being of use to me until it possible for Windows users to access it.
Patrick: When you say subscribe, do you mean the free service or the pay service?
-jef
Upgrade to Premium? This is a start of going the M$ ways. Maybe it’s time to upgrade to Debian. I am a software developer. Why would I want to contribute to open source free software to Ubuntu when it has contributed to me commercialism. It may not be much, but down the road it could lead to more and more commercial software for Ubuntu. This is a noob distro anyways. I might as well switch to a distro a little more involved in learning. Then Canonical can redefine their slogan “Ubuntu will always be free of charge” to not include “premium ubuntu software”, and soon the remove the forget the slogan at all. Did Canonical forget where Ubuntu came from? Debian and derivatives made from it have been an alternative to Redhat. Or Ubuntu could become like Fedora, test Subversion development software for bug reports to better their commercial Linux Redhat software.