Dropbox Clementine Acquisition Points To Possible Skype-Like Competitor
Dropbox acquired Clementine, a company providing secure voice and text messaging services for BYOD businesses. What exactly Dropbox plans to do with Clementine's technology is unclear, but it seems likely that the company will use this tech to develop its own BYOD services.
Although Dropbox is commonly used today by over 400 million users, more than 100,000 businesses also take advantage of the cloud storage service Dropbox provides. Businesses today, however, need to take advantage of a full range of software.
When a user brings his or her own device, however, security is paramount, and often difficult. These systems don't stay inside of a network that the company is able to secure, and when moved from one network to another, they become vulnerable to outside security threats that aren't present inside of the company. Clementine specialized in providing voice and text messaging services for companies with a BYOD policy, using more rigorous security features to protect the data on these devices.
The question now is what will Dropbox do with this newly acquired technology? The most likely answer is that Dropbox will expand its services to include these voice and text messaging services, and thus offer more services to businesses as a combined package. The company could even take steps to fully integrate these services into Dropbox and provide a single software solution capable of editing documents, sharing files, calling other users, and texting your colleagues.
Although the Dropbox service is relatively simple to use, a unified application capable of all of these functions would reduce the time moving between windows and could save time while collaborating on projects.
Because Dropbox has such a large number of non-business users, too, it wouldn't be surprising to see Dropbox provide this service to everyone, and ultimately become a competitor to programs like Skype, Tencent QQ, or Lync.
Follow Michael Justin Allen Sexton @LordLao74. Follow us @tomshardware, on Facebook and on Google+.
Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox.
-
surphninja Is Skype even that profitable of a service? Why compete with it?Reply
That's a fairly narrow prediction of what they could do with this service. Maybe they could partner with device manufacturers, and maybe even release their own phone. As wifi expands, it's only a matter of time before most of us move off of the cell networks. -
MentalMetal UPVOTE if you agree with removing the arrows on the sides of the benchmark slides!Reply
Let you'r OCD BE FREE!!