Whoever coined the phrase competition is good likely wasn't thinking about cloud services and cloud storage, but the phrase fits perfectly as cloud vendors continue to slash prices which is making it cheaper than ever for businesses and users to share, transfer and collaborate on data.
The latest cloud player to jump into the pricing fray, which began a few weeks back when Google cut its pricing quickly followed by Amazon Web Services (AWS), is MediaFire. The vendor is now offering 10GB for free, 1TB for $2.50 a month and 100TB for $24.99.
"With the launch of our new storage plans, we are looking to provide everyday users with a secure and affordable way to share and store all of their music, photos, videos, and files with the people that matter most," said Derek Labian, CEO and Founder of MediaFire, "Over the next few months, we will be launching several new and exciting products, including new and updated applications for iPad and Android."
The news comes as cloud services gain greater appreciation by users and market competition hits full throttle. Back in late March Google ignited the price war with deep cuts across all its services. It slashed its Compute Engine fees 32 percent, cloud storage costs by 68 percent and its Google BigQuery is now costing users 85 percent less.
Within a day or so AWS shot back with deep cuts of its own though it claimed it had nothing to do with the Google price moves.
"Lowering prices is not new for us. It is something we do on a regular basis. Whenever we can take costs out of our own cost structure, we give them back to our customers in the form of lower prices. We should expect us to continue to do this periodically," said Amazon Web Services Senior VP Andy Jassy at the AWS Summit in San Francisco.
Given MediaFire's announcement it'll be interesting to see if popular Drop Box will respond and get into the price battle. It currently offers 2GB of free space and 500GB for $49 a month.
One cloud services player not jumping into the battle is Rackspace, according to a report that quotes company leadership as stating Rackspace is sticking to a 'premium price for premium service' strategy.
"Rackspace is not a commodity cloud provider," said John Engates, Rackspace chief technology officer. "We do not base our prices on competitors' rental rates for raw infrastructure. Rackspace has for 15 years charged premium prices for premium service, expertise, performance and reliability."
