Silicon Valley locals and commuters may remember our billboard along the 101 last summer, calling on frustrated SharePoint users to take the Box.net challenge. We invited SharePoint customers to trial our service with the promise that if they didn’t prefer Box, we’d foot the bill for three months of SharePoint. The result: no one picked SharePoint.

Well, we’re at it again. Drivers who missed debating the virtues of Box versus SharePoint while stuck in rush hour traffic will be happy to see we’re still committed to taking cumbersome enterprise software head on. At Box, we’re driven by the core belief that sharing should be simple, whereas solutions like SharePoint…well, you can read for yourself:

Business today is different - workers are more web savvy than ever, we need to share with partners and customers beyond our office walls, and IT wants to spend less time maintaining infrastructure and more time focusing on business-critical technologies. We believe this calls for a new approach to collaboration - one that addresses the deficiencies of traditional enterprise software solutions, as outlined on our billboard.

With Cloud Content Management, we’re reinventing how businesses share content. We think sharing should be quick, inclusive and inexpensive. And above all, simple.

Have any ideas for our next Billboard? Tweet us @boxdotnet or write them on our Facebook fan page wall.

Post by Jen Grant, VP of Marketing

We love talking with our customers about how they’re using Box and other cloud-based services to enhance their business. It gives us a chance to get feedback on our product, but also helps us keep tabs on the bigger picture - the trends and movements that are reshaping business today.

Today’s workers, workplace, and IT are all rapidly evolving, and many of our customers are at the forefront of breaking the 9-to-five, office cubicle mold and defining new ways of working. The LaC Project works - or in their words, “tworks” - from all over the world, using Box’s cloud content management and other web-based platforms to collaborate anytime, anywhere with anyone. Fanminder, with its lean, virtual team of 12 employees, manages its client and reseller base through a broad range of cloud applications, including Box, Google Docs, WordPress and Skype.

There are so many great stories that we want to share. Karen Appleton, our VP of Business Development, is now a regular contributor to The Huffington Post, where’s she’ll blog about how companies ranging from small businesses to Fortune 500 companies are reinventing the workplace. Her first post, “Workplace Rebellion: Savvy Workers Drive Technology Transformation,” ran today. Please give it a read, and stay tuned for future posts from Karen.

Your comments and feedback are always appreciated, either here or @boxdotnet or @karenappleton.

Post by Ashley Mayer, Community Manager

Few businesses jumped to endorse the iPhone when it was introduced in 2007. It was viewed as a device for consumers, not equipped for “real” business use like, say, the BlackBerry. After all, where was the keyboard?  But a funny thing happened - the iPhone did nothing less than completely change people’s expectations for what a smartphone could do. People instantly embraced it because it was dead-simple to use, it was always connected and allowed people to share and interact with content in totally new ways. Everyone saw the value in this new exciting new platform, including software companies who built applications that made our already mobile workforce even more mobile, and transformed the iPhone into an enterprise tool. In essence, it left people wondering, shouldn’t it have been like this all along?

Today, Apple is introducing its much-anticipated tablet. As I write this, I don’t even know what it’s going to be called. But for many gadget geeks around the world, they’re expecting the holy grail of digital devices. And it may very well live up to that insanely high expectation. But we’re all excited because it’s a class of device that reinforces one of our core philosophies. It reinforces our belief that all types of content should be accessible over the web and across platforms. While it works well for consuming videos, sharing photos or reading books and our favorite applications, we think it’s something that should apply just as much to how we consume and share business content. Businesses don’t have to invest in expensive software, maintain hardware or wait through endless implementations to do what they want to do with their content. With Cloud Content Management, we want to break traditional barriers and old ways of thinking, transforming the cloud into the future of enterprise tools.

We’ll be introducing some exciting things this year, which we also think will leave businesses wondering, shouldn’t it have been like this all along?

In the meantime, let’s all enjoy Apple’s latest creation.

Post by Aaron Levie, CEO/Co-founder

Last week, Robert Scoble of building43 stopped by Box HQ for a good chat with CEO/Co-founder Aaron Levie and VP of Marketing Jen Grant. They talked about the new content viewing and embedding features we recently introduced, where Box is headed with Cloud Content Management, and how Box’s open platform has brought key integrations with business applications like Salesforce.com and a growing variety of mobile apps to Box customers.

And because Robert was kind enough to visit us on his birthday, we all indulged in some celebratory cake after filming.

Check out the video and let us know what you think! Comment here, tweet us @boxdotnet or share your thoughts with Robert @Scobleizer.

Post by Ashley Mayer, Community Manager

Imagine if the web worked like this: you want to watch a YouTube video, but you have to download the video in a separate window before watching. Then you decide to read the New York Times, but you have to open a PDF to read each article. Now you’re in the mood to browse photos on Flickr, which requires downloading each image before viewing.

Ridiculous? Totally. The web is designed for the seamless consumption of content, without forcing us to worry about content types. But the scenario described is analogous to what we deal with every day in the workplace. Want to view a proposal sent via email? Open Microsoft Word. A spreadsheet? Excel. A presentation? PowerPoint. Soon your desktop is cluttered with open software applications.

Business content is still rooted in the old desktop-centric paradigm, but the people who are using this content are more web-savvy than ever. We want to be able to share a presentation as easily as we would a YouTube video, and we want to be able to do this whether we’re working from the office or a cafe, regardless of what software we have. And we want to be able to share with a key business contact on another continent as easily as a neighboring coworker. If enterprise software makes it too hard to share, we’ll just find another channel.

The way we work is changing, and at Box.net we’re rethinking - and disrupting - traditional content management by freeing our users from the limitations of their desktop. We’re building a Cloud Content Management solution that reinvents how our users view and share all types of files by fully leveraging the way content is delivered and consumed on the web. And today we’re announcing two new features in line with this greater vision:

Integrated file view: You can now view files instantly, without ever leaving your browser. Box’s integrated file view feature lets you view the most popular file formats, including documents, spreadsheets, presentations, PDFs, images, Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator files, audio and video. It lets you flow through all your content in one place, without downloading or worrying about whether you have the right application to view a file. To activate this feature, just go to Settings, Display, and set Content Preview to All Files.

File embedding: You’ll have the ability to embed instantly viewable content on the web, as a natural extension of the first feature. Users can share and embed all types of files so that people viewing that don’t need to download files and launch them in a desktop application. And again, there’s no need for anyone to worry about having the right desktop applications. This feature will be available in a few weeks, at which time we’ll share the simple steps to embed files.

With these new features, we’re making millions of files on Box instantly viewable to millions of people in a single click. That’s pretty powerful. Get a feel for the new content viewing experience by clicking on the file thumbnails below. To experience the full effect in your own Box account, open any file and then just click “Next File” to navigate through the folder, moving seamlessly from one file type to the next.

These two features are crucial steps towards reinventing the way we access, share and collaborate on content in the workplace, and are a result of our acquisition of Increo Solutions last Fall. With Cloud Content Management, we are working towards a larger vision where our users can view, share and eventually even edit content without concern for file type or desktop applications. And by integrating Box.net with other key cloud platforms like Salesforce.com and Google Apps, we’re ensuring that your content is available and viewable across the applications critical to your business.

Take the content viewer for a spin and let us know what you think. Comment here or @boxdotnet or @levie.

Post by Aaron Levie, Co-founder and CEO

A few days ago, our friends at TechCrunch ran a post I wrote titled “The Coming Tornado: Cloud in the Enterprise.” In it, I explain why cloud-based services will tip for large businesses over the next two years, unleashing a “tornado” of change in enterprise IT. Maturing platforms, increasingly web-savvy knowledge workers, and compelling pricing are all driving adoption of the cloud and with it, a new, more strategic role for IT. Security concerns and fears of of relinquishing control of data are the final major hurdles to mainstream business IT embracing cloud platforms.

Based on the ensuing comments, it’s clear that this topic is hot one (at least to the TechCrunch audience). Some readers agree that the cloud is ripe for enterprise adoption, while others think I’m a little nuts to make such a claim. People on both sides of the argument made some very compelling, thoughtful points, a few of which are worth addressing in greater detail here (comments are paraphrased):

What about security and downtime? It’s too risky for large corporations to relinquish their data.
Security and downtime are serious concerns whether you’re dealing with the cloud or on-site services. But think about it this way: a cloud vendor’s very existence hinges on its ability to protect data and have as little server downtime as possible - it’s our primary competency. Whereas maintaining servers is just one of the many responsibilities of a typical IT department, it is absolutely integral to a cloud company’s business. This isn’t to say that businesses should just “trust” the cloud - transparency is essential and there are certifications audited by third parties that detail how a SaaS provider is keeping data secure. Many large SaaS providers today are SAS70 certified, which includes regular auditing by third parties on all aspects of security - from network firewalls to authentication policies to procedures for employee termination (Box is currently undergoing SAS70 certification).

Storing business data in the cloud requires rethinking security, and we’re seeing a lot of innovative IT professionals begin to embrace this new approach, which in turn frees them up to focus on more strategic technology initiatives. Our Box.net customers range from small businesses to Fortune 500 companies, all of whom see view Cloud Content Management as a more valuable, productive and secure way to manage their content.

Won’t the future of Enterprise IT will be a mix of cloud-based solutions and on-site data services?
I’m not proposing that every single business application or process will be in the cloud - some may make more sense to keep on-site, at least in the foreseeable future. But there are a vast number of cloud-based services that offer significant advantages over traditional enterprise software - we have customers that run their entire businesses in the cloud, using a combination of Google Apps, salesforce.com, Wordpress.com, SuccessFactors, and many others. Most of these customers are small businesses, but as these platforms continue to mature this approach is fast becoming a reality for larger enterprises as well. And a serious perk of using cloud-based platforms is that they’re far easier to integrate - whereas traditional enterprise software integrations are tedious, requiring significant IT time and even consultants for systems integrations, cloud services take an open platform approach, making integrations seamless and more effective.

Is the Cloud really ready to tip in the next few years? Isn’t a five to ten-year timeframe more realistic?
By no means will all businesses move to the cloud in the next few years, but we will see a significant surge in cloud adoption by mainstream businesses, with competitive advantage going to the early adopters. Small and medium businesses have largely been the first to embrace the cloud, drawn by the cost efficiencies of web-based solutions. The cloud will tip when this trend extends to the enterprise, and we’re already beginning to see significant traction with large-scale deployments of Google Apps and the dominance of Salesforce as a CRM solution. At Box.net, our top ten deals of 2009 were with name brand companies, and our enterprise revenue increased 535%. Cloud platforms are maturing at a rapid rate, and as they do, adoption will accelerate.

This discussion is far from over. Throughout 2010, we’ll see cloud vendors make major product enhancements, and large businesses exchange traditional enterprise software for cutting-edge cloud-based services. The tornado is not yet here, but it’s time is soon.

Post by Aaron Levie, Co-founder and CEO

Since we launched in 2005, Box.net has made it easy for users to store and share files online - today, more than 3.5 million people and businesses use our platform to collaborate in the cloud. Today’s announcement that Google Docs will also support storage for all file types is further validation that cloud-based solutions are truly the future of content storage, management and collaboration.

We’re particularly excited about this announcement given our existing OpenBox integrations with Google Docs and Gmail. The Google Docs Viewer makes it easy to view PDFs, PowerPoint Presentations and TIFF images with Google Docs. Box users can also send file and folder links directly to Gmail or Google Apps Mail, with the option to view file download stats on Google Analytics. Today’s expansion of the Google Docs offering enhances the synergies between our two services.

Many of our Box.net customers run their businesses using a range of complimentary cloud solutions, such as Google Apps and salesforce.com. While Google Apps is a combination of communication and collaboration tools, including Google Docs, Box.net provides a complete cloud content management platform, letting businesses access, manage and share all their content online with the advanced administration and reporting tools expected of a content management system, including password management down to the file level, six levels of access permissions, and reports on user and file activity.

The maturity of popular tools like Google Docs will drive adoption of cloud services of all types, and continued integrations between platforms - such as Google Apps and Box.net - will reinforce the use of cloud services by small businesses and help them tip for the enterprise. 2010 is going to be a huge year for the cloud in the enterprise, and this is just the beginning. Stay tuned…

Post by Aaron Levie, co-founder and CEO

Well, 2009 has officially come to an end, but what a year! We’re excited that so many of you - whether new or seasoned Box users - were along for the ride. We started 2009 off with a bang, launching a completely new design and user interface. Since then, we’ve faced off with SharePoint on a billboard, launched an open mobile platform, and even been named the second fastest growing private company in Silicon Valley. Best of all, an amazing array of new customers and businesses have begun using Box to manage their content and collaborate in the cloud.

This last year was a particularly productive (and busy) one for our ever-expanding, tireless engineering team: we introduced global folders, user profile pages, task assigning and management, full-text and quick search, a new notification preference system and better email design, and individual file collaboration. We also updated our OpenBox directory with Salesforce and LinkedIn integrations (among many others), as well as a new improved iPhone app. And that’s just the beginning. Our Enterprise functionality exploded (in a good way), with features like download statistics, new security settings, better password management, enhanced bulk user administration, and new group features. We’ve also dramatically sped up the application and improved the usability of the most important activities on Box.

We also grew our team substantially throughout the year, bringing on board incredibly talented individuals from companies like Google, LinkedIn, SuccessFactors, Yahoo, IBM, BitTorrent, and more. We even acquired a company (Increo), adding two amazing engineers who will be launching some exciting stuff in early 2010. But we’re certainly not done building our team, so if you know anyone who could be a good fit, please email us (or actually, Kenny) at kenny@box.net.

What we’re most excited about, though, is what we have coming up in the future. 2010 holds a lot of promise not only for Box, but also for cloud companies in general. Businesses are finally willing and able to leverage the full suite of web-based services provided by companies like Salesforce, Amazon and Google. We’re excited that Box is among the business applications making it possible - and advantageous - for companies to embrace the cloud. In 2010, we’ll be taking Box to the next level, reinventing how you can import content, engage with it, and beyond. We’ll continue to integrate with some of your favorite applications and devices, making sure that Box always provides the best way to share content in your business.

Thank you for being a loyal customer, and we hope Box will become an even more valuable tool for your business in 2010. We’re grateful to have you as part of our community and, as always, we welcome all feedback and ideas as we head into what will be a very exciting year.

Thanks, and happy New Year!

-Aaron

We’re all about making it easy to organize and share documents and media online, but what about managing the resources you find on the Web? As you know, Box has a built-in feature that lets you save bookmarks for research reports, articles, and other key online sources you want to reference or share with others. We’ve teamed up with popular link-sharing services AddThis, AddToAny and ShareAholic, making it even easier for you to save interesting web links directly to Box.

How does it work? If you already have one of these link sharing buttons on your web page, Box.net will now be available in the drop-down menu along with other sharing services like Twitter, Facebook, and Digg.

When you click on the Box button, you’ll be prompted to confirm the URL, name and description of the bookmark, also designating its location from a drop-down menu of your Box folders. You can even add a comment, giving fellow folder collaborators a heads-up that they should read this article or check out this event. From your Box folder, just click on the bookmark and you’ll be taken directly to the bookmarked web page.

You can also download the browser add-ons for AddThis and ShareAholic so that you can bookmark any web page in your Box folders. An integration with Read it Later is also launching soon, and we’ll also be debuting a toolbar feature in the near future, so stay tuned.

Adding this to your own site or blog
You can also add the Box Bookmarks button to your own website or blog, making it easy for visitors to share the content on your site with their colleagues. Just visit the Box Bookmarks developers page and grab the code to embed the button on your web pages.

Whether it’s an Excel sheet or an interesting article on the web, managing and sharing all your important content is even easier than before. Send us a tweet @boxdotnet or comment to let us know what you think.

Post by Ashley Mayer, Community Manager

Wouldn’t it be great if you could send snail mail as easily as clicking “send” on an email? We’ve teamed up with PostalMethods to make sending your Box files through the mail as simple as possible.

Here’s how it works: just select the PostalMethods OpenBox action from the directory, and click “add application.” Next time you need to mail a document, just click on the file actions button and choose “Send as letter.” Enter your PostalMethods user name and password - if you don’t have an account, you can quickly create one by clicking “register” - and fill out the address. Your documents will be printed on business quality paper, inserted into standard business envelopes, and will arrive at USPS within one business day, where they’ll be posted via First Class mail. You can even monitor their progress through the PostalMethods secure control panel - it’s like having your own personal, virtual mailroom.

This is the latest in a string of OpenBox features designed to make sharing simple. Our earlier integration with FedEx means you can ship straight from your Box account, or you can easily fax documents with our eFax OpenBox action. Even though we’re doing more and more things online, sending real mail is here to stay. Box and PostalMethods just made it a little easier.

Post by Ashley Mayer, Community Manager