
TenCent is a Chinese tech company that is comparable to Google or Yahoo. TenCent is making headlines because they just recently announced that they are expanding their public cloud services to include the international market. TenCent has surpassed all of the competition by offering a robust 10TB of free cloud storage space. This figure completely surpasses any other offering currently available to international web users. DropBox offers between 25GB and 50GB and Microsoft’s Azure cloud offers a maximum 25GB. Competitors within China such as Baidu and Qihoo are offering 1TB of free storage. TenCent looks to completely change the game in the public cloud storage sector by going above and beyond the offerings of any other public cloud storage service.
Many consumers of TenCent’s services worry about the Chinese government and their strict restrictions on data flow inside and out of the country. TenCent has circumvented this by building cloud facilities outside of China for use by those within the international market. Some users will certainly ask, “Is there a catch? Can I really get 10TB of storage for free?” It depends on your definition of a catch. Users will be given up to 10TB as they need it. For example, TenCent wouldn’t give you an entire 10TBs worth of space if you fail to use under 1TB. Your space would be throttled back and as you need more space, you can request it accordingly.
TenCent is also trying to invest in SnapChat. Analysts think that TenCent’s investment in the Western Hemisphere will be its gateway into the American market. TenCent is set to release an English version of Story Camera in a few weeks. This application is like an enhanced Instagram. Peter Zheng is the Vice President of TenCent and he says that the 10TB cloud storage solution will be ready in early 2014.