Acer Offers Cloud Hosted by PCs in Challenge to Amazon
June 6, 2014
Grazed from Bloomberg. Author: Tim Culpan.
Acer Inc. is getting into the cloud-computing business to compete with the likes of Amazon.com Inc. and Google Inc. The difference is the maker of notebooks wants you to host the service on your own personal computer. Its private cloud offers more security than rival services that store information on off-site servers, according to the Taipei-based company. Acer’s software to operate a personal cloud is free and compatible with a wide variety of smartphones, tablets and computers, according to the company.
Facing a third straight annual loss, co-founder and Chairman Stan Shih came out of retirement in November to help lead a revival at the business as demand for PCs slumps. Amid the company’s $691 million loss last year, the fledgling cloud services unit was a lonely bright spot, turning a small profit…
“I’d like to see more than 50 percent of profit from non-PC as quick as possible,” Shih said, referring to the company’s cloud-computing business. He spoke in an interview with Bloomberg News at the company’s Aspire Park campus in Lungtan, northern Taiwan May 29. That cloud services unit generated NT$1.3 billion ($43 million) in revenue last year from clients including Bank of America Corp. and UBS AG, said Rex Wu, a vice president at the company. That’s less than 1 percent of Acer’s NT$360 billion in revenue for the year…
Read more from the source @ http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-06/acer-offers-cloud-hosted-by-pcs-in-challenge-to-amazon-google.html