UPDATED 10:44 EST / DECEMBER 01 2013

Weekly Cloud review: online storage and Healthcare.gov

It’s been an exciting week for both the cloud ecosystem and Apple users, with Kim Dotcom’s Mega introducing a free iOS app that comes with nearly all the features of the website, including the ability to manage lockers and share file and folder links with account contacts. Additionally, you can stream photos and videos, read messages from other Mega users, and store as much as 1GB worth of files on your device’s local memory. Not only that, but the app also lets you buy extra storage directly via an in-app purchase, just in the case 50GB of free cloud storage you get for signing up isn’t enough.

While Kim Dotcom is expanding his comeback service to more platforms, Symantec is reducing its cloud footprint in an apparent effort to catch up to the fast-growing mobile market. The company recently notified customers that it will discontinue Backup Exec.cloud, an online storage solution designed for use by SMBs and in branch offices. Symantec describes the offering as a next-generation “hybrid option to back up data onsite and to the cloud, ensuring fast backups and retrievals and an offsite copy.” The company said that it will shut down the service in January to “ focus on more productive and feature rich cloud-based applications” that provide file sync and share capabilities for mobile users.

The Department of Health and Human Services meanwhile is still struggling with Healthcare.gov. A spokeswoman for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services said on Wednesday that Hewlett-Packard will replace Verizon’s Terremark subsidiary in hosting the exchange, a move that SiliconANGLE CyberSecurity Editor John Casaretto views as a “multiple factor decision.” The technical issues that plague Healthcare.gov lie in the site itself, Cassareto explains, which suggests that the switch is driven primarily by cost considerations.


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