LaCie buys Wua.la

It’s all over the Internet since yesterday evening, so I thought it was about time I’d add my 2 cents to the rumbling of blog posts.

LaCie is primarily known for its USB storage disks (somehow design-ish), Wua.la is a p2p cloud storage system using either crowd storage or real datacenters to provide users with an online drive solution (such as me.com).

Somehow it seems like LaCie is starting to realize that as fiber connections (100Mb + high uplink) become slowly available, the essence of “saving” data might slip from hard drives to online backup solutions thus endangering their market position. Indeed, LaCie only design the electronics PCB between the sata hard drive and the USB port and the plastic box, the drive itself is just bought to third parties, and while drives are still needed to backup data their local presence might become obsolete within the next 5 years.
From that prospective going into cloud storage might sound smart, but I must confess I’m a bit disappointed by the choice of Wua.la.

We have been benchmarking their technology back in the days at WaveStorm (where we enable access to connected devices in a P2P way from any point on the Internet), and I must say I do not buy the vision of home computers always-on sharing their drives to secure their own datas.

The whole assertion sounds wrong when home computers become laptops are not always-on and have limited drive spaces mostly filled by HD videos and high-res pictures. Moreover the Java interface was so bulky in term of ergonomics (form a Mac user prospective at least) that it’s really hard to assume anyone non-geek is ever going to understand it.
Hopefully LaCie will reorient the technology and the vision in something both cash-generating and end-user oriented completing their product line with integrated smart services… wait and see… Anyway it can’t really harm more LaCie’s stock (see below).