I expect 2014 to be an exciting year for CrashPlan for a few reasons, several that are mentioned on the image of the tweet above. CrashPlan has been hinting at a native app for Mac for over a year now. Hopefully that native app is not just for Mac but for Windows and Linux as well. It would certainly improve the CrashPlan application on all platforms.
A new graphical user interface is also not a surprise after the new website redesign that launched in November 2013. The new design is nice and having the applications reflect that new design would be great. It would also be great if the new applications also have some more user friendly options. One of the the cons I mention in the CrashPlan review is how complicated the client is. While it is not a problem for more advanced computer users it can be overwhelming for others that just want an easy to use service that keeps their files safe.
The question is what is the “plus a lot more” that is mentioned in the tweet? While I can only guess at what else might be coming from CrashPlan here are some ideas that might be in the plans for 2014.
New Mobile Apps – There will be new mobile apps to match the new website design obviously but will the new Android and iOS apps take the next step and start backing up files from the devices as well? Many of CrashPlan competitors are already able to do this and it would be a great addition for CrashPlan users to be able to automatically backup their files, like photos and videos, from their mobile devices.
File Sync and Share – Not long ago Code42 launched SharePlan, a file sync and sharing solution for enterprise customers. Will parts of SharePlan make their way into CrashPlan or will Code42 create a version of SharePlan for home users? CrashPlan and Code42 is certainly not the company you think of when you think cloud storage and sharing but I am sure many of their customers would love to be able to sync and share their data from their existing backups.
New Plans – This is always a tough topic for cloud backup and storage providers. CrashPlan became very popular a few years ago when Mozy changed their plans and dropped their unlimited storage option. CrashPlan has raised their prices as recently as last year and when the new website launched they also dropped the 10GB plan that they offered and now only offer unlimited plans.
In the past CrashPlan has stated they are committed to the unlimited storage model, as you can see from the Facebook post below. Curiously the video the Facebook post links to is no where to be found.
Could there be new CrashPlan plans and pricing in 2014? If there is it will be worth watching to see how CrashPlan goes about that as even Bitcasa discovered that even when you grandfather existing users there can be a huge uproar.
Funding – CrashPlan and Code42 have raised additional funding in the past and perhaps 2014 will be the year they raise more funding or look at becoming a publicly traded company.
Expansion – CrashPlan has offices in Minnesota and Australia. This also includes data centers in Australia. Perhaps 2014 will be the year CrashPlan expands across Europe as well with new offices and data centers. Considering people are becoming a little more leery of sending their data to the US thanks to the NSA we might see CrashPlan and Code42 being more local to European customers.
Those are just a few ideas that came to mind when I saw that tweet from CrashPlan. Just to be clear I have no inside knowledge of what might be coming from Code42 and CrashPlan, just an interested observer.
Here is the embedded tweet that inspired this post.
@richpaul Oh, yes. New GUI, native app, plus a lot more. :-)
— CrashPlan (@crashplan) January 4, 2014
What do you think Code42 and CrashPlan have planned for 2014? Leave a comment with what you think we might see from them this year.
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