Last Wednesday, Amazon Web Services announced the general availability of Zocalo, the cloud storage and collaboration platform, to AWS customers. Zocalo will be available free of charge for a 30 day period for up to 200 GB of storage for a maximum of 50 users. After the 30 day free trial, users can access the Zocalo platform at a rate of $5 per user per month. The announcement of the general availability of Zocalo also featured news that AWS CloudTrail now records API calls made to the Zocalo API and subsequently delivers log files containing details such as API caller identity, time, source, the nature of the API request and Zocalo’s corresponding response. More than just a cloud storage platform, Zocalo provides users with the ability to annotate and provide feedback on files and to additionally receive email notifications regarding team feedback and task-related deadlines. Zocalo has been in limited preview since July but now emerges as a serious contender in the hotly contested cloud storage and collaboration space amongst the likes of Box, Google Drive, Dropbox and Microsoft OneDrive.
Dropbox, for example, recently announced 1 TB of storage for Dropbox users at the rate of $10/month, in contrast to the 100 GB of storage per month to which Dropbox Pro customers were previously entitled. Moreover, Dropbox Pro now features enhanced security features such as passwords for shared links to Dropbox files, expiration dates for shared links and the ability to delete Dropbox files from lost or stolen devices. Zocalo now joins the cloud storage party with pricing and functionality to match its competitors, although it remains to be seen whether enterprise customers will choose to opt for AWS for their cloud storage and sharing needs given the heterogeneity of its other cloud products and services, or select to instead opt for a vendor dedicated purely to building a storage and document sharing platform for the enterprise such as Box or Dropbox. Regardless, the battle for cloud storage and collaboration continues to evolve with new twists and turns as AWS throws it hat into the ring with its now generally available Zocalo platform. Amazon Zocalo is now generally available in the US-West-2 (Oregon), US-East-1 (N.Virginia) and the EU (Ireland) AWS Regions.
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