Cloud Sync Options

[Rollo62 536]

@corneliusdavid

Thanks for the nice summary of the sync services, from your blog

 

I only wonder why you were not looking after the big 3-5 in Cloud: Google Drive / FirebaseCloudStorage / AWS / Azure / Apple iCloud to the comparison ?

Some have maybe more than only one solution for sync and storage and the whole ecosystem tends to get rather complex in the end.

On the other hand, those are the companies I think first when it comes to cloud matters ... and it would be great to have their solutions added in the comparison too.

 

[corneliusdavid 214]

6 hours ago, Rollo62 said:

I only wonder why you were not looking after the big 3-5 in Cloud: Google Drive / FirebaseCloudStorage / AWS / Azure / Apple iCloud to the comparison ?

Don't confuse big-business cloud services with the specific functionality I was looking for: file synchronization. However, there are many options out there which I did not evaluate; I'll address the ones you asked about.

 

I do use Google Drive a little, mainly for automatically saving photos from my Android phone and for working on shared Google Docs files. I've recently moved most of my stuff off of Google because I had my domain tied to G-Suite for business and they recently stopped offering that for free. Firebase is a platform for web and mobile application development and tied to Google, not a general-purpose file-sync service.

 

I have an AWS account but setting up an S3 bucket and syncing to it is not straight-forward and there are complicated bandwidth and storage cost calculations--I wanted something simple. AWS is also geared more for business applications--which I've used but had not considered it for simple file-sync purposes. Is there a specific service I'm forgetting about that would've fit in with this? Or did you mention AWS just because it's known for cloud services?

 

I also have an Azure account and use remote virtual machines and services but like AWS, it has complicated bandwidth and storage costs, and it's geared more for business--it's not a simple file-sync service. If I had an on-premises Windows network and used their hybrid cloud, this would work but if that were the case, I wouldn't need a cloud-sync service, I could simply use a network server's file share space. This is another service I think you mentioned simply because when people hear "cloud" they think of AWS and Azure but I was looking specifically for a cloud-based, file-sync service to replace OneDrive, which is Microsoft's product in this space and which works with Azure and Office 365--which is what I was moving away from.

 

As for Apple, that's a little different story. While I have a few Apple devices for development and testing, I stay away from Apple products and services as much as possible on general principles: I don't like their high prices and restrictive user interfaces. This discussion could easily end up in arguments about Microsoft vs Apple, Android vs iPhone, etc. but I don't want to do that--I'm just saying this was my personal quest and Apple is never on the list of options for me unless there is no other option.

[corneliusdavid 214]

@Rollo62 By the way, this would've been more appropriate as a comment on my blog rather than a question here in this forum. My blog post doesn't have anything to do with Delphi.