iCloud Beta Finally Released: Should Rivals be Afraid?

The release of iCloud Beta marks technology giant Apple's maiden venture into cloud business -- and it's going to be a wake-up call for rivals like Amazon Cloud Drive, Google Music Beta Digital Locker, Windows Live SkyDrive, Box.net, DropBox and SugarSync.

iCloud Beta was released for developers with a bang, featuring all the new Web apps for Mail, Calendar, Contacts, etc. It also comes with a "Find my iPhone" app that was earlier available as the MobileMe service, besides allowing users to view their iWork documents, such as Pages, Keynote and Numbers, that are stored in the cloud for any Apple device.

The service has already been lapped up by developers, and despite being in beta phase (read: work-in-progress) and access to the site reportedly being available only to existing MobileMe customers using Mac OS X Lion (according to PCMag, iOS device users haven't been lucky yet in accessing inside iCloud.com), it's posing a threat to its rivals.

The basic iCloud service, which gives you 5GB of storage space, is free. If you want 10GB extra, you'll need to pay $20 per year. Want more? 20GB will cost you $40 per year while 50GB will set you back by $100 per year. Expect a bumper deal from Apple for larger storage in the near future.

On first glance, iCloud may look pricey compared to its rivals -- especially Windows Live SkyDrive, which offers 25GB space for free and Amazon Cloud Drive, which offers additional 20GB for $20.

However, Apple fans can't complain, as by way of comparison MobileMe costs $99 annually for 20GB of storage. Apple will pull the plug on that service on June 30, 2012.

Moreover, music, apps, books, as well as your Photo Stream will not count against the free 5GB storage. "Since your mail, documents, Camera Roll, account information, settings, and other app data don’t use as much space, you’ll find that 5GB goes a long way," Apple said on the iCloud Web site. And, that's good news to heavy iWork users.

However, there's a downside to iCloud. It can only offer limited storage days – 30 days. iCloud doesn't act as your warehouse. It can't also save all your data. But it does make sure that everything is synced and backed up properly as promised.

Nonetheless, the service has already been lapped up by the developers and despite being in beta phase (read: work-in-progress) and access to the site reportedly being available only to existing MobileMe customers using Mac OS X Lion (according to PCMAg http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2390238,00.asp) iOS device users haven't been lucky yet in accessing inside iCloud.com) because like the App Store, iTunes is also now in iCloud. Which means any music or movie purchased is automatically backed up in iCloud and can be accessed using any Apple devices.

iCloud also enables users to have individual control over the music, apps and books and can also specify whether or not pushing the content should be limited to W-Fi connections only to save cellular bandwidth. iCloud also enables automatic wireless backups for iOS devices.

And, iCloud has iMatch. For just a flat $24.99 annual fee, iMatch will match the ripped songs in the user's library with 18 million+ songs in iTunes and upgrade them to higher quality 256kbps AAC DRM-free.

That's good news because Apple has stolen a march over its rivals by inking licensing deals with major music labels like EMI, Universal Music Group, Sony Music and Warner Music Group even as Google and Amazon struggle to come to an agreement with them.

The remaining songs that could not be matched has to be uploaded manually. "First time we've seen this in the music industry," Jobs said. "If you don't think we're serious about this, you're wrong."

Start the slideshow to explore the top iCloud rivals. Let's see how they stack up against the newest kid on the block.

Must Read: Apple will Launch iTunes Replay Soon

Apple has finally unveiled its cloud service iCloud and though it is in Beta, it has made rivals like Amazon Cloud Drive, Google Music Beta Digital Locker, Windows Live SkyDrive, Box.net, DropBox and SugarSync sit up and take notice.

Amazon Cloud Drive - Amazon has been in the cloud business since 2006 and Cloud Drive allows users to store their music, videos, photos and documents online and access them from anywhere they want.

Cloud Drive offers 5GB of free storage and for additional 20GB, you only need to pay $20 and for 50GB you need to pay $50. In other words, anything above 5GB, you get to pay $1 per GB annually and you can upgrade storage space up to 1000GB.

With Cloud Drive, if you want, you can go for the option of automatically saving your purchases to your Cloud Drive whenever you buy any digital download from the Amazon MP3 Store. Thus, all your purchases will be available for you to download anywhere, anytime. But it doesn't mean that you have to make a purchase to use Cloud Drive. If you have an Amazon account, you have your 5 GB free online storage on Amazon Cloud Drive.

A word of warning though - Cloud Drive allows you to access the files from any device as long as they support Adobe Flash Platform. It means Cloud Drive is useless for any iPhone or iPad customer since they do not support Flash.

Last month, Amazon, feeling the heat from iCloud, announced that it is offering unlimited storage space for music on a promotional basis for any customer who opts for the lowest price plan of $20 a year for 20GB storage, and free storage space for all Amazon MP3 purchases. Anything else will count towards overall tally.

Google Music Beta Digital Locker - Search giant Google launched its Music Beta, a digital music storage service, in May. The service, which is currently available only in the US, supports streaming music to desktop browsers and Android phones and tablets, or any other device that can use the Adobe Flash platform.

The service comes with a web-based music manager, which will not only help the user organize and play the songs but also make the songs available on all devices.

A cool thing about Music Beta is that you don’t need to be online to listen to your songs. You can "pin" certain albums or artists to always sync with your Android devices and they will be made available offline.

Music Beta is available initially by invitation only, and it is free — or at least so during the beta period.

Music Beta's biggest drawback is it is only a part of Google's "cloud" suite and there's no one-stop destination that hosts all your media needs. You have to go to Picassa to deal with your photos, Gmail for your e-mail, Music Beta for online music storage and Google Docs for your documents. Each of the services offers at least 1GB of free space and if you need more, you can pay an extra $5 per year to add 20 GB for most of its services. You can also rent up to 16TB each year for $4,000.

Moreover, Google's service can only run on any device as long as it supports the Adobe Flash platform and doesn't support buying music as it is only for streaming purposes.

Windows Live SkyDrive - SkyDrive is essentially a file hosting service, allowing you to upload files to a cloud storage and access them from a Web browser. At first glance, SkyDrive is good because you get 25GB of free storage space for files and synchronization of photos.

SkyDrive's interesting features include Windows Live Photos, to upload and share photos, and Windows Live Office, which offers online versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. It also integrates with Bing's Save & Share feature, which allows you to save search histories into a SkyDrive folder.

You need to have a Windows Live ID to keep your files private, whereas publicly-shared files don't require any such ID to access.

SkyDrive also can be accessed through Windows PC, Mac, Windows Phone 7.

However, SkyDrive's biggest drawback is you can’t expand beyond the free 25GB. Even if you're willing to pay for it.

DropBox - DropBox, founded in 2007, has been designed keeping synchronization and storage in mind. It enables users to store and share files and folders with others across the internet using file synchronization.

With DropBox, you can upload music, files, and videos to your Dropbox space, and can set up the service to make those files available to you, no matter which device you are using or wherever you are. There is also an option called 'public folder' that allows users to share their files with others, not necessarily a Dropbox user. It also has a built-in audio player in web interface and iOS client.

DropBox offers 2GB of free online storage, and if you refer Dropbox to others, you can get up to 8GB of free storage. Hungry for more? DropBox is upgradeable up to 100GB for $200 per year.

Dropbox is extremely popular because it boasts of a relatively large number of user clients. It's compatible with all versions of Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. It also works with most mobile devices including Android, Windows Phone 7, iPhone, iPad and Blackberry.

Box.net - Box.net is an This award winning online content management and file storage system founded in 2005. Similar to Amazon Cloud Drive, Box.net has also adopted a freemium business model, providing 5GB of free online storage page.

You can share, collaborate and work with files that are uploaded to Box.net. The service allows you to access, manage, share and view all types of files on the Web with confidence. The best thing about Box.net is that you can share files securely, without the hassles of traditional FTP solutions.

Box.net offers three account types - Enterprise, Business and Personal, and based on these, you'll get a number of features like unlimited storage, custom branding and administrative controls.

Under Personal plan, you can upload files of 25MB size in 5GB for free. If you want more, you need to pay $9.99 annually for 25GB storage space and $19.99 for 50GB storage space. It accepts file size up to 1GB.

Under Business Plan, for only $15 per user per month (minimum 3 users), you get 500GB of storage space and can upload files up to 2GB.

Under Enterprise Plan, you can get unlimited storage space and can upload files up to 2GB in size. Pricing is dependent on how much storage space you need.

Box.net offers third party integrations with business applications like Google apps, Gmail, NetSuite and Salesforce.

Box.net also offers a mobile version of its service for iPhone, iPad, Android and WebOS devices. Considering its offerings for Apple devices, it would be interesting to see whether people using Apple products will switch to iCloud over Box.net.

SugarSync - SugarSync is a popular service which is especially focused on synchronization. It syncs files, photos and media among multiple computers, running on both Windows and Mac OS X and backs them up over the web.

SugarSync has launched its re-designed Android app, AutoSync that enables the automatic syncing of both photos and entire folders from Android devices back to computers.

The most notable feature of SugarSync is its universal media synchronization engine called Universal Sync platform.

Except for DropBox, SugarSync is the other other service that is compatible with mobile devices such as iPad, iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile devices, Android devices and Symbian devices. In fact, it's better than DropBox because the latter doesn't run on Windows Mobile and Symbian mobile platform.

SugarSync has various pricing plans. You get 30GB storage space for $49.99, 60GB storage space for $99.99 a year, 100GB storage space for $149.99 a year and 250GB storage space for $249.99 a year.