The Co-founder and CEO of Jolicloud, Tariq Krim took to the stage at the London Web Summit yesterday to announce the launch of Jolicloud Me, a tool for collating all of your content on the web. So why is he so confident that we would all like our heads up in the cloud?
Jolicloud was founded in 2009 with the idea of making the cloud experience a bit easier, “We believe that the cloud is a part of our life today,” says Krim. “If you improve access, you improve life for everyone.”
An early acknowledgement of the uptake of cloud computing meant that Krim and his team had a head start, “We started years ago by building our own operating system to connect and use the cloud instead of the traditional software. We used the web as the core technology.”
Krim clearly has a passionate belief in cloud computing and its future, “This decade is the most important in the history of humanity because in the same way as the people used the printing press to document our lives in the physical world, this decade is when we started to do the opposite and more of the data we used to have in books and cds, video and photos are now being pushed into the cloud.”
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It’s true that many of us have slipped into the cloud without really thinking about it. We post more material to the web now with traditional blog posts and more formal publishing methods. We also find ways of casually documenting the world around us via camera phones and apps to upload our images and video clips. Krim hopes that his new service Jolicloud Me will help us make a bit more sense of all that material.
Krim observes, “In years from now, we will create so much content it’s going to be hard to know what belongs to us. Sometimes you don’t even know what is there, or you forget about things. We want to make it easy for people to rediscover their life online.”
Light and flexible working
Jolicloud is known for its light-weight operating system and Krim feels that being smaller and lighter is a benefit in the web marketplace, “We’re not as big as Apple or Google and so the only focus we have is the users. As a user, I will use many devices in my life, so what matters is not being on one platform or another, it’s really about having all the things that belong to me follow me into the future.”
You may recognise Tariq Krim from his past ventures online. He founded Netvibes back in 2005 with Florent Fémont. As a way of organising streams of digital information, it is echoed in Jolicloud Me with a focus on the user and how the individual can control and organise data.
Krim’s attention to the quality of user experience is still a primary factor in his business choices, “I believe everyone is unique and every experience should be unique. Today I see other services trying to force people into shared social experience. That is one part of your life, but there is also a time in your life when you need to be alone to do things where you don’t need to interact with others. There are a lot of things that should only be personal. With Jolicloud Me we are trying to connect you first to the things that are personal and then to the social.”
Lofty ambition
The Jolicloud team of just 15 people is based in Paris and Krim sees room for growth. “We’re just entering the cloud era and it’s not going to turn back. More and more people will be connected and use the web to document their lives. This means there will be an increased demand for service.”
When it comes to rocky economic times across Europe, Krim also remains confident that he is still in the right place to expand, “I think Europe is one of the best places in the world to try these services. We still have a large user-base in the US, but you can find very interesting dynamics in Europe. I think Europe is going to be one of the main markets for any internet company, so it’s good to be here.”
In a time of headlines about widespread economic crisis, it’s refreshing to hear some optimism and good news about working in Europe. Let’s hope that strong internet companies will be flexible enough to ride out the storm.
Listen to the complete interview here –
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