
Amazon Zocalo - lowbloodsugar
https://aws.amazon.com/zocalo/
======
peterb
Jeff Bezos is using Bill Gates' playbook from the 1990's: build alternatives
to the most popular apps on your platform; bundle them; and improve app
quality over time. This business strategy is very hard for a company like
dropbox to compete against, even if they have better IP/quality/features.

Edit: we can also expect Amazon versions of "knife the baby", "cut off their
air supply" and "DOS ain't done until Lotus won't run".

~~~
dgallagher
One big thing Zacolo has over Dropbox is cheaper pricing. Dropbox for Business
is $15/mo [1] per user (can be up to 30% cheaper if you pay in-full for a
year), where-as Zacolo is $5/mo [2] per user. That'll put downward pressure on
Dropbox's corporate pricing unless they have much better service, or much
better features, than Amazon.

[1]
[https://www.dropbox.com/business/buy](https://www.dropbox.com/business/buy)
[2]
[https://aws.amazon.com/zocalo/pricing/](https://aws.amazon.com/zocalo/pricing/)

~~~
tachyonbeam
I'm a dropbox customer. I'll be staying with them for the foreseeable future,
but I'm glad to see competition might bring me more space and/or cheaper
pricing.

------
HorizonXP
Looks like for years, we've been saying that Amazon will likely try and
compete with Dropbox and Box. Looks like that time has come.

Having used Dropbox for personal stuff, and Box for work stuff, I have to say,
neither has completely fit my needs.

Sure, Dropbox is great for working within small groups/teams, and for personal
syncing. Sometimes the sharing functionality gets a bit wonky, but definitely
the best implementation by far.

Box works decently well in the work environment, but it is definitely clunkier
than Dropbox in a lot of respects. No one liked using Box where I worked (FB).

On my own, I've found that the most of my clients don't use any of these. In
fact, they still try to run things on FTP sites! As a result, I've had to
adapt to them and use Citrix ShareFile. It actually serves a different purpose
than Dropbox or Box. It's a drop-in replacement for sending/receiving files to
people within and outside your organization. I can silo off folders to
specific users, companies, etc. I can send a link to folks asking them to
upload files to me. It's definitely fit the bill in a lot of respects.

So internally, I still use Dropbox. But I don't expose that externally to my
clients.

It seems that Amazon Zocalo is trying to compete with Google Drive, by
allowing you to edit files in the browser, and integrate with your existing IT
infrastructure. Not a bad tactic, but I think the service that will do really
well in enterprise is one that merges the functionality of ShareFile into
Dropbox, with IT integration.

~~~
meritt
I tried using Box for a similar reason (I needed a way to securely share
multiple files and/or folders with external clients in a way that did not
require them to install software or sign-up for some service) and it just
doesn't work. I also desired a way to automatically upload new content to this
platoform.

No dice. After emailing with 6 different Box employees (all ignoring my
requests and trying to sell me on shit I didn't ask for, then would just pass
me onto someone else) I was finally told that I could only do that if I paid
for an enterprise "call for pricing" license.

Sigh. I'm using a http-auth secured index-of directory for now. If anyone has
a superior suggestion, I'm all ears.

~~~
terpua
Try using Insync with Google Drive. Right-click on a local folder/file and
copy the private link.

[https://insynchq.com](https://insynchq.com)

I'm a co-founder.

~~~
dublinben
I thought we learned this week that "private links" for sharing documents are
horribly insecure. I'm pretty sure they want it to still be password
protected, which ShareFile is.

~~~
tedchs
BTW, Google Apps has a feature where you can share to "people within my domain
who have the link", which is a very nice middle ground between "everyone on
the Internet with the link" and "I need to explicitly choose who to share this
with.

------
filmgirlcw
This is a move against SharePoint Online/Box/EMC's shitty thing. The proof
will be how well it works.

Box can work well enough if you've got everyone on it and you're using it as
your main file server. The problem is that if you want to use it with users
who expect it to work like Dropbox, it's not really designed for that kind of
nimble access.

The pricing is totally inline with the competitors on a per-seat basis. It's
even cheaper if you have any of the think client instances.

Interesting to see how it plays out -- and what impact this will have on Box,
now that it is delaying its IPO.

~~~
thejdude
Please please please let companies use this instead of SharePoint. Anything
sane.

Ah well, probably the kind of people who make "enterprise" buying decisions
will not even SEE Zocalo on their perception radar, so it will never happen.

~~~
gregd
I make enterprise buying decisions and it is on my radar. But then again, I
frequent HN so there's that...

------
eob
I wonder how long it's going to be before Dropbox announces another vertical.
They have an amazing product, but it's basically been unchanged for years now
and been allowed to succeed (and thrive!) as such because competitors have
always treated their own Dropbox-style clients as a hobby instead of a
product.

~~~
MichaelApproved
I disagree that the product has been unchanged for years. Their app syncs
photos on my phone, the shared link gives a great preview of files (esp
videos), they've got a strong API for developers and they're improving picture
sharing.

These may seem like little changes to one product but they're making it a rock
solid product in one vertical that is slowly creeping out into others.

~~~
comex
Okay, it's fairly off-topic, but after reading that I had to respond. I
consider the shared link a serious anti-feature compared to the old direct
link, I suppose due to poor engineering.

\- For pictures: There is no way to see the full resolution without clicking
the download link. Fine for photos, no good for the screenshots I like to
upload.

\- For PDFs: uses pdf.js. That would be nice if I were still using Adobe
Reader, not so much in Safari where I have a superior reader built in.

------
jliptzin
Dropbox is in a tough situation because they're charging 5x as much as
competitors for roughly the same service (I'm comparing the monthly 100gb
plan), yet they can't lower the price because they likely have a massive
number of customers who are fine with paying $10 / month and/or don't know
about cheaper competitors...so the price will likely stay put until they start
to see signs of their existing base churning out, but by then their
competitors may already have won over a lot of mindshare.

~~~
coldtea
> _Dropbox is in a tough situation because they 're charging 5x as much as
> competitors for roughly the same service_

Care to name some of the competitors?

Besides Google Drive, I mean, which I won't use (tried it, and it was crap
compared to Amazon, but am trying to avoid Google in general, and I don't want
to encourage their bundling of Google Apps with the Drive).

~~~
jliptzin
Google Drive, OneDrive, and now it looks like amazon is throwing their hat
into the ring. These are all cheaper options. I switched to google drive from
dropbox without a problem.

~~~
acomjean
box.com and mega are also working in the same space to some extent.

If you have the time installing the open-source, self hosted owncloud probably
would be cheaper.

------
gabegottlieb
Gotta love Amazon, at $5/user/month that is 1/3rd the price of Dropbox for
business ($15/user/mo or $13.25/user/mo if you pay for the year upfront.)

~~~
Hermel
Dropbox is in a challenging situation. They've grown too large for an exit and
without large partner, they are fighting an uphill battle againt giants like
Google, Apple and Amazon. I would not bet on them.

~~~
saosebastiao
That's what IPOs are for.

~~~
rational-future
IPO may help the founders cash out, but it won't be enough for the company to
overcome heavyweight competitors like Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Apple.

~~~
saosebastiao
Yes it will. An IPO can either cash you out, or it can raise cash. In fact,
once you've had your IPO, you can raise cash quite easily. Amazon could never
have competed with WalMart if they had kept private.

~~~
JTon
And once they have the cash from an IPO, where do they go from there? The
problem is much more complex than you're suggesting

~~~
hueving
This is hackernews, nobody thinks about what actually happens after an exit
event. :-)

------
magic5227
Terrible name...

Also it looks like Box and Google Drive are significantly cheaper.

~~~
elwell
I agree, the name sounds foreign and it also will be pronounced different
ways.

~~~
jvagner
It IS foreign. A famous, foreign place. And it's Spanish, not exactly
unfamiliar to much of the planet.

If you're familiar/know the place, it makes sense why they named it that.

~~~
lifeformed
I don't think he's saying foreign = bad, just that foreign = harder to market
to a largely English-speaking audience.

------
B5geek
Zocalo?

Must make Babylon5 reference:
[http://babylon5.wikia.com/wiki/Z%C3%B3calo](http://babylon5.wikia.com/wiki/Z%C3%B3calo)

Or you can reference the real origin of the word:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z%C3%B3calo](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z%C3%B3calo)

It doesn't really look like this Amazon product fits the word being used.

~~~
probably_wrong
In Spanish (or, to be precise, in some Spanish-speaking countries) it means
"tile", as in "floor tile". Not bad, but not impressive either.

~~~
Shorel
Zócalo means socket, socle, or baseboard, depending on the context.

Socket is assumed if no context.

I have never heard of it used as 'tile'. A tile is 'baldoza'.

------
gcv
The marketing copy doesn't mention local (or remote) filesystem integration.
This doesn't look like a direct Dropbox (or Box or Google Drive) competitor to
me — more like Microsoft SharePoint. Amazon does not seem to have gone for the
consumer market here, nor even for small businesses. "Enterprise-ready."

------
callumprentice
ISTR Zocalo is Mexican Spanish for main square or plaza. Guess there is _some_
logic in that.

~~~
omaranto
ISTR?

~~~
esoltys
"I Seem To Recall"

------
joeblau

      > # What might go wrong? (This is a test of imagination, not confidence.)  
      > Google might finally unleash GDrive and steal a lot of Dropbox's thunder 
      > (especially if this takes place before launch.) In general, the online
      > storage space is extremely noisy, so being marginally better isn't good
      > enough; there has to be a leap in value worthy of writing/blogging/telling
      > friends about...[1]
    

This was from Drew's YC dropbox application. It looks like it should have said
"Amazon, Google, Apple, and Microsoft would all unleash their cloud platforms
at lower price points with software services sitting on top." Drew does have a
very valid point: Being marginally better isn't good enough. I love Dropbox's
service and I want them to win, but this pricing war is not great news for
them.

[1] -
[https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/27532820/app.html](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/27532820/app.html)

------
alrs
It's discouraging that Amazon is able to keep moving forward with such
predictable momentum while the management teams of its competitors still
haven't figured out how to take on Amazon circa 2008.

~~~
opendais
It is no different than Google in that respect. Tbh, I think Google has more
market share for its core products relatively speaking.

That is one of the things that makes tech interesting, you can win really,
really big in one area then roll it into other related areas.

------
lingben
sorry if this has already been mentioned but does zocalo have client side
encryption? that is to say, does the file get encrypted before being sent?

this part mentions encryption but is isn't clear:

"All documents are stored in a designated AWS Region and transmitted in
encrypted form."

~~~
mkal_tsr
I keep looking for that and I haven't found any copy that supports the notion
they have client-side encryption, so it's a non-starter for me :-(

------
zefi
This product looks great. I run Kivo (www.kivo.com YC S13) we're trying to
address a lot of the same problems around sharing and storage that Dropbox et
al have missed out on. Zocalo seems like a really good first pass, but I don't
think tying users to a specific storage platform is the winning strategy for
something that's fundamentally a collaboration app. It shouldn't matter where
someone stores their files, collaboration applications should exist as layers
on top of existing content. Forcing users to move to a new platform is one
more point of friction when it comes to adoption. Storage companies releasing
collaboration products is like email providers only letting their users email
other users of their service - Gmail to Gmail email product. The reason why
email works as a communication protocol is because it is an open one. Content
collaboration is the same, the company that will win this market will be the
one that addresses it without letting the politics of the 'storage wars'
poison its simplicity. The 'it just works' of Dropbox comes from its ability
to store and sync any file without any change in user behaviour - it's just
another folder. No one's created an 'it just works' product for collaboration
yet, where it doesn't matter whereabouts your files are stored or who it is
that you want to work with. That's what we're trying to do at Kivo, and we'll
be announcing a set of integrations very soon to make that so. If you'd like
to help, get in touch, my email's in my hn profile.

~~~
fred_durst
I like your clever use of "looks great" and then a subtle dig with "seems like
a really good first pass" and then sneaking in some weaknesses before
explaining why the strengths of your platform are better. Then bookending a
second branding mention of "Kivo" to wrap things up.

~~~
zefi
I think it does look great. This is a really hard problem to solve and they've
done an excellent job. I'm sorry if you feel otherwise.

~~~
fred_durst
No, I think you did a great job of appearing really positive. That style is
all the rage these days and it looks like you have a great grasp of it. Keep
up the great work!

~~~
zefi
Oh, apologies for misunderstanding! And thanks for the compliment :)

~~~
jessaustin
My head just exploded with irony...

------
malchow
Is it Alan Rickman narrating the introductory video?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbjMrQtoZlU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbjMrQtoZlU)

That would be one hell of an easter egg.

~~~
ddispaltro
It is not, that guy has probably one of the most distinct voices, and that is
not him. Would have been great though.

------
hatred
It amazes me to find the number of competitors who use AWS as a platform while
competing with Amazon.

Certainly tells something about customer service at Amazon.

~~~
filmgirlcw
You could say the same for Microsoft though. Or Oracle. Or SAP. I mean, iCloud
runs on Azure so...

~~~
gamegoblin
Is it confirmed that iCloud runs on Azure, or just rumor?

~~~
prvcy
You can confirm it yourself. Look at the outgoing connections while using say
Messages on OS X, they are going to azure domains.

~~~
aridiculous
I just tried. It goes to an IP that resolves to Apple with WHOIS.

------
mark_l_watson
I have mixed feelings about this.

I dumped iTunes for Amazon's music store - works really well on iPad, Android
phones, and my laptop. Apple lost me when my curated iTunes library was not
available on my droid. Really like the Amazon player clients.

Zocalo looks good for one account for pictures and videos shared by my
extended family with permissions, and still keep my work stuff separate.

Where Dropbox really wins though: smooth integration with so many other
services. I can, for example, edit my leanpub manuscripts on my laptop,
surprisingly well also on my iPad, and actually OK on my droid phone. Same for
many other apps that use the Dropbox APIs.

What will probably keep me on Dropbox forever is that $100/year seems really
inexpensive for a service that I use a lot, and it would take too much of my
time to switch.

~~~
gregd
_and it would take too much of my time to switch._

Yeah, that drag & drop can sure be a pain in the ass... :)

------
ifup
This makes it much more likely that competitors that rely on amazon services
will need to build the entire storage stack in order to compete with Amazon.
Hopefully this leads to more great oss solutions for building things like s3.

------
JonLim
Forgive my ignorance, but would something like this be decent for slinging
around video/media files?

Been investigating storage VPS solutions for doing so, but I wonder if this
would be a more elegant solution.

------
wkd415
Conflicted copies?

I don't understand how that is never mentioned when talking about
collaborating on documents.

Comments are worthless without track changes.

Someone make word obsolete by making track changes better.

~~~
thejdude
If all editing is done in the cloud, I don't see any problems. MS Word isn't
designed for collaborative editing.

That, or use something like markdown + version control.

------
rsync
What is the interface between the front end UI (file sharing, commenting,
etc.) and the back end storage ?

That is, can I manipulate the back end via s3 and s3 tools ?

------
Hengjie
It'd be interesting to see if their annotation allows for exporting to their
original documents. It's similar to what
[http://www.notablepdf.com](http://www.notablepdf.com) did but only for PDF
documents. Their export functionality for MS Word is quite interesting, and
would actually work extremely well for lawyers who constantly use tracked
changes.

------
sergiotapia
Zocalo. I've heard that word somewhere here in Bolivia before. It's hardhat-
construction related, I'm not sure if it's related to sockets or maybe a type
of wrench.

I think it's the little plastic you put into a hole in the wall after you
drill it. It's so the screw you place in the wall is securely set and won't
move. Cool name!

~~~
fasteo
The white wooden part is a "Zocalo" [http://img.decoesfera.com/2013/01/zocalo-
madera.jpg](http://img.decoesfera.com/2013/01/zocalo-madera.jpg)

~~~
adolfoabegg
For me, "zócalo" in spanish, is this:
[https://www.google.com/search?q=skirting+board](https://www.google.com/search?q=skirting+board)
(see the images)

------
anotherevan
Does anyone have experience with Egnyte?
[https://www.egnyte.com/](https://www.egnyte.com/)

The thing that makes it attractive to me is that it can sync with a Netgear
NAS. About half our staff are in a central office, the other half are remote,
so this is a solution that looks like it would cater well to that situation.

------
thawkins
No linux client, shame

~~~
rsync
Is there not an android client ? Just curious...

------
jakozaur
Looks like everyone is pushing on enterprise cloud storage. After
Google/Microsoft price slash and Amazon entering that market I wonder what
would happen to Box IPO.

Looks like this market will commoditized and be yet another race to bottom.

------
yalogin
This is what I was waiting to happen ever since Dropbox became popular. I
always said Dropbox is a good idea but its not a long term business. Remains
to be seen how they fare.

~~~
Synroc
In your opinion, what would Dropbox need to do to become a long term business?

------
jorangreef
The company that does best in this market will be the company that exists to
service its customers, not the company that exists to compete with others.

------
gautamjeyaraman
We built and launched exactly the same app one year back at
[http://collablayer.com](http://collablayer.com)

------
grinich
What an awful name.

~~~
hackinthebochs
It is in fact a very bad name. A name with unfamiliar sounds to an English ear
will be that much harder to catch on and build brand recognition.

~~~
mkempe
Yep. Just like Schwarzenegger.

~~~
hackinthebochs
Yes, his name was an impediment to becoming a household name. It's not a
complete prevention, however.

------
dendory
I fully expect version 2 will have full document editing, competing directly
with GDrive and Office 365.

------
gomesnayagam
my startup ([http://tataatsu.com](http://tataatsu.com) ) launched similar
ditto amazon zocalo 1 year back,
[http://collablayer.com/](http://collablayer.com/) :(

------
Thiz
Zocalo is a stupid name.

It really is. No matter how much you thought about it, how many nights of
brainstorming with your pillow smelling like señoritas, or perhaps drinking
margaritas at a pub in the zocalo. It is stupid.

Please say this is a 'beta' and it will be renamed to Amazon cloud, drive,
square, plaza, or whatever but drop it, just drop it.

~~~
trevmckendrick
I lived in Mexico for 2 years. Zocalo was used to refer to "downtown" or to
the public square.

It's where everything is, and where you go when you need to get something.

I think it's a great name.

~~~
Thiz
I know what zocalo is, I am a damn latino too, been there a couple of times,
still that doesn't make it a nice name.

It sucks, but whatev.

------
dragonwriter
So, is the intended reference in the name to a baseboard or the main square of
a town?

------
ccozan
Is this similar to OneNote from Microsoft? Or more likely to Google Drive ?

~~~
gamegoblin
I think it's like Google Drive and Dropbox, but geared towards enterprise use.

~~~
hobofan
So Google Drive if you have Google Apps for Business...

~~~
filmgirlcw
No. It's like SharePoint and Box. Google Drive sync clients don't obey Active
Directory policy rules the way they need to. This does. Which is huge for big
businesses.

This is competing with Box and with clunkier solutions from EMC. It's also
competing against SharePoint Online.

------
jonah
There's also Zócalo Public Square[0], a "not-for-profit Ideas Exchange that
blends live events and humanities journalism."

[0] [http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/](http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/)

------
edpichler
Just a curious comment: Dropbox uses Amazon S3.

I really like Dropbox, an state of art product and I'm also a great fan of
Bezos company and his strategies, but I currently feel very satisfied with
Dropbox, everything works very well.

------
markhahn
Perfectly clean of any Linux taint - is this a message?

------
CHsurfer
It sounds like a Sharepoint killer.

~~~
xur17
Except you can't host it yourself.

~~~
spacefight
Exactly. And that you can't trust a company who wants to do business with the
CIA. I know I'm getting downvoted for this - thanks guys ;)

~~~
penguindev
As if the hardware / software stack you'd 'host it yourself on' is secure?

~~~
tormeh
This needs more attention. Can we even trust OpenBSD, much less Linux? There's
so much code in there. How could we possibly know that they're safe? That
packets aren't a little bigger than they need to be? We'll just have to live
with it I guess.

------
gcb0
i cringe that they allow to use existing amazon accounts on this.

~~~
voltagex_
Why?

~~~
gcb0
because zero owners of regular amazon accounts are for corporate use.

so far they only tied the accounts with cloud services, where the audience is
clever enough to not use their home amazon accounts at. and instead create one
with their employer email.

now with this office suit, everyone will just login with their home account.
just like they do with corporate google docs. well, google is a bad example
because then they made everything worse by joining personal and domain (which
often meant employee at small company) into a single account.

------
_dark_matter_
Any word on how this compares to all of the competitors? Or is it too early to
tell?

------
auvi
I am wondering what Aaron Levie will think of this.

------
mercurialshark
Why'd they go with a British accent?

------
frozenport
How do you pronounce this?

------
bjliu
This is basically Google Drive...

~~~
prezjordan
Huh, I forgot no one else is allowed to make a Google Drive competitor. That's
pretty convenient for Google.

~~~
dragonwriter
The observation that this is similar to Drive doesn't imply that it is not-
allowed for that reason. It does seem to imply that the commenter found it
_not-interesting_ because it doesn't seem (to the commenter) to offer anything
new, but not-interesting is not the same as not-allowed.

------
grigy
Isn't this a reason to not use AWS anymore?

