Box blossomed with its cloud storage service launched close to a decade ago. But with the likes of Microsoft and Google consuming swaths of the crowded field, Box is expanding its services and promising not to shift into something its loyal following will no longer recognize.
Box launched in 2006, serving up cloud storage space before going after the enterprise market. Box has launched workflow software and support for Microsoft's Office 365, two moves that indicate the cloud service provider is responding to its customers.
Box Workflow was released with enterprises in mind. It offers administrators the ability to chain together tasks with statements of logic. Box users can utilize Workflow to construct and manage a pipeline for internal documents, process invoices and collaborate on digital assets.
Workflow elements are also managed with with the new system's metatags, a feature Box CEO Aaron Levie says was deployed out of necessity and not borne of industry trends.
"Our platform works the way people work," Levie said. "We didn't [add these features] because Documentum [or any other content management vendor] has metadata workflow. We did it because the way customers interact with the content demanded metadata and workflow. It happens to be that many of the things by name resemble things in the past, but [it's in the context of our platform]."
Another sign of the times Box now works in, the cloud service provider has gone from poking fun at Microsoft and the software maker's SharePoint to delivering support for Office 365.
"Microsoft is taking a much more open stance. They are becoming more interoperable," said Levie.
Right now, support for Office 365 is in its beta stage. Levie even indicated that Box has been considering taking on more Microsoft tools, because the demand from enterprise clients has been there.
Content-retention controls rounded out Box's latest rounds of moves to stay competitive against the wide open plains of storage space offered by the DropBoxes and Google Drives of the world. Retention controls empower the user and make Box more reliable, according to Annie Pearl, product manager at Box.
"With businesses entrusting more and more documents, invoices, contracts and proposals to our centralized content platform, we're constantly looking for ways to make that content more useful to everyone," said Pearl. "At the same time, we're giving you the tools you need to properly govern that content to meet your legal, compliance and other business mandates."
Still a private company, Box filed to go public in March. With its approximately $124 million in sales in 2013 negated by $168 million in losses, Box has had to continually rely on funding to keep things running smoothly.
