I came across a nice post by Tom Grant of Forrester Research, talking about the impact Web 2.0 has had on how we talk about accessing information. As he pointed out, the old discussions on application architectures were repository-centric. In other words, all the talk was about how and where you store content.

Today, all the talk is about what you can do with your content:

“One of the striking things about the Web 2.0 world is not only the ease of integration, but also the relative unimportance of the repository in the discussion…Mashups keep on growing, both in options (what you can combine) and methods (how you build them, and the level of technical skill needed). You can upload documents to Box.net, and use Zoho to edit them in place.”

This reflects the kinds of questions we’re always asking at Box. How can we help people do more with their content? How can we make it easy for people to connect and work together around shared content? It’s an exciting and fun challenge because new tools are giving people new choices every day. We’ve long supported the idea of a robust and open platform that brings people together around shared ideas and content, lets them choose how they bring those ideas to life through a myriad of tools and gives developers a place to connect with users and introduce them to even more tools to enhance their content.

What’s next? It’ll be fun for us all to stay tuned. But as Tom said, it’s a whole different ball game:

“What many once considered to be a kludge–integration above the level of the repository–is now the main platform for innovation. Now, if that’s not a sign that we live in a different world, I don’t know what is.”

Here’s to an exciting and awesome 2009!

Post by Sean Lindo, Community Manager

Happy holidays everyone! I suspect that a few of you will be giving or receiving a gadget or two this holiday season. Some of you might even be giving or receiving a netbook, so I hope my quick review of the Dell Mini 9 gives you a better idea of what you can expect.

As many of you know, Box.net announced a major partnership with Dell back in September, supplying a free Box account to users of Dell’s new Inspiron Mini 9 netbook. In the interest of educating myself on this partnership – and the fact that I’m a proud gadget geek – I decided to test one out. I took one of the company units home and ended up being surprised in more ways than one. The biggest surprise though is that I liked the Mini 9 so much that I ended up buying one for myself. Normally that wouldn’t be so unusual. But what makes it particularly noteworthy is the fact that I’m an avid Mac user. I have a couple of Macs at home, an iPhone with me at all times and a growing, historical archive of iPods. Furthermore, I’ve loved Apple for a long time, list Pirates of Silicon Valley as one of my favorite movies and I’ve read just about every book written on Steve Jobs and Apple in the last 15 years. Some of my friends even know me as their personal Mac genius. You get the idea.

So how did a Mac-man fall for a Dell Mini? Let me share a few thoughts – and some pics!

Great form factor and excellent fit & finish

What first struck me was the Mini 9’s size. This thing is tiny. What makes it seem tinier is that it has the looks and the fit and finish of a larger, more expensive and stylish notebook - just shrunken down a bit. It has a smooth, obsidian black finish over the outer lid, a glossy 9” landscape screen, a slick and sturdy keyboard and a smartly applied silver tone along the outer rim of the screen and a majority of the palm rest and track pad. Since the base is finished in a matte black, the silver tone makes the the Mini 9 appear thinner than it actually is. And for the Mac aficionados out there, the screen hinge moves the screen away and down, giving the Mini an more upscale look. Nice touch.

Moreover, the Mini comes with a pretty good complement of ports: three USB ports, audio in/out, video out (handy for hooking up to external monitors and projectors), Ethernet and an SD/MS-Pro/MMC card reader. It might not be as thin as a MacBook Air, but the Mini sports more ports that will satisfy most casual users. And no need for a dongle! Bonus. All this in a unit that weighs about 2.3 lbs.

Overall, the whole computer is solidly constructed and impressed me from the start. It looks and feels more expensive than its $349 base price would suggest.

The keyboard issue is a non-issue…for the most part

Making a notebook this small doesn’t come without some sacrifice. When it comes to sub-notebook designs, manufacturers shrink the keyboard to keep the size down. This often makes the keys feel cramped and almost unusable. Fortunately, Dell equipped the Mini 9 with a keyboard that doesn’t take long to get used to after about a half hour of use. The only adjustment I had to really teach myself was hitting the apostrophe key comfortably in stride.

Some people may never be comfortable with anything but a full size keyboard. But I suppose it’s a little like people who feel that the iPhone’s touchscreen keyboard can’t be as effective or as pleasurable to use as a real keyboard. If you give it a fair shot, you’ll get used to it. And in my case with the iPhone and the Mini 9, you might even like it.

Zippy performance

Unlike early netbooks from other manufacturers, the Mini doesn’t suffer from a sluggish, second-class processor. The Mini’s 1.6 GHz Intel Atom chip and graphics card can more than handle web surfing and e-mailing, watching high quality video streams and using productivity applications. While it won’t ever be the ideal machine for pro-grade video or music editing, that obviously isn’t the purpose of the Mini or other netbooks. It simply lets people do what they do most with their computers everyday – and well, if I do say so myself. I comfortably used a Mini while working remotely on the road for the entire day.

Equipped with Box.net goodness

This wouldn’t be a Box blog post without me closing out with a word on what this partnership with Dell was all about. You could say, sure Sean – the Dell looks like a grown-up notebook, has a grown-up Intel chip inside and an almost grown-up keyboard. And it costs under $400. What’s the storage on that Mini? That thing got a Hemi? Not quite. The unit I bought has 16 GB of solid state storage. But you can also buy a Mini with 4 GB for storage. I know, I know – 4 GB? Most users couldn’t get by with this as their main machine. Heck, we have phones that can carry more than that.

But again, that’s not what netbooks are for. The manufacturers that want to do a good job with netbooks put in the essentials – a nice, bright screen, a fast processor, a decent keyboard and a full complement of ports that make it easy to perform the most common tasks and tap into the growing world of web-based applications and services like – you guessed it – Box.net. Storing and accessing files on Box makes it easy to live without a capacious hard drive. So when you think about it, 16, 8 or even 4 GB of local storage isn’t the limitation you think it would be, especially for a netbook.

While there are still many netbook skeptics out there, all they need to do is try one out, like I did. And I think many of them would walk away pleasantly surprised. Like I did.

In the meantime, I know everyone at Box.net joins me in wishing you a happy and safe holiday season.

Post by Sean Lindo, Community Manager

I came across an interesting article from Phil Wainewright on SaaS and customer renewals. What I think is the key point in his article is what he wrote at the very end of the piece:

“But much of the work to keep customers loyal has to be done much earlier. Make sure customers are happy throughout the life of the contract, and they’re far less likely to go through the disruption of changing provider than if they’ve already become dissatisfied.”

This is not just true about the effectiveness of your customer support or the availability of account managers, but also with the ease-of-use of your software. Much of the benefit of Web 2.0 has been in the increase in usability helped by new technologies that make web-based software as friendly if not more user-friendly than desktop software. SaaS providers need to think constantly about how easy it is for employees to use their software - not just the managers that get great reporting. If employees are happy and the software is constantly being used, then securing renewals is not something the company has to put too many resources behind - the work has already been done.

Post by Jen Grant, VP of Marketing

Just a few days ago Gil Yehuda from Forrester predicted that SaaS collaboration solutions like Box.net will continue to find success in the current economy because business-lead collaboration needs will continue to grow while IT departments are squeezed. He sees this as an expansion of the concept of Tech Populism where, not just SMBs, but business units in enterprises “increasingly behave like SMBs, and they are going out and provisioning technology on their own.”

While we’re definitely seeing this trend at Box.net where many businesses come to us looking for a solution, we’re also seeing forward-thinking IT managers who recognize that the cost savings of going with a solution like Box, even in a larger Enterprise, are significant. I recently spoke with an IT manager at a publishing firm (we’d like to share their story sometime, so stay tuned) about how their marketing department saved upwards of $10k a year by using Box.net to collaborate with internal and external partners. So while I think it is true that many businesses will increasingly see more and more value in using a cloud-based service to enable their departments to collaborate more effectively, I think that IT managers are not as slow to pick up on the value of lowering cost as Gil may imply.

Gil does give a ray of hope for better collaboration between IT and business (and that there is light at the end of the economic tunnel):

“When the economy picks up, IT and the business can have a heart-to-heart talk and make some decisions about the future of the SaaS based content.”

We all hope the economy picks up soon, but I think many IT managers and business leads are already having that heart-to-heart.

Thanks for thinking of us Gil.

Post by Jen Grant, VP of Marketing

Today MindMeister is launching its integration into OpenBox, enabling you and your collaborators to brainstorm and organize thoughts through Mind Maps.

The MindMeister service is compatible with existing “brainstorming” files (.mm and .mmap files), as well as a new file unique to MindMeister. To get started, you may add this service to your account by visiting http://www.box.net/services/mindmeister.

Sean, our Community Manager is sharing a sample reference file to help you get started: http://www.box.net/shared/p5594lm58y.  Just download that file and upload it into your Box account, or right click and select “Add to my Box.”  From there you can begin to edit mind maps.  Expect an easier way to create new mind maps within your Box account in the near future.

For more information about MindMeister, please visit http://www.mindmeister.com.

Thanks!

Jeremy

If you haven’t noticed, our Updates tab is beginning to expand to show more and more relevant information about the information you’re sharing and receiving.  You can now see comment updates, files from collaborators, and… now you’ll see when people download your files.  This will make it easy to tell that the contract you sent out has been downloaded, or the marketing pitch was received, etc.

Here’s how it works:

When your files are downloaded from a shared page or collaboration folder, we’ll display that notification as an Update.  When we know the identity of the downloader (if they’re logged in, or in a collaboration folder), we’ll show the user’s name.  Later, you’ll be able to add special tags to the shared URLs so you can “tag” various download sources (say:  box.net/shared/key123#customername).

Also, starting on Friday we’ll begin to send notifications when these files are downloaded (you can turn this off at any time).

Thanks!

Aaron

Concerns around the economy have increased the focus on cloud-based services and applications. Their benefits to business are obvious - low operational costs, low maintenance, easily scalable and accessible anywhere, anytime. Forrester Research recently stated that collaboration tools can play a role in helping enterprises cut operational costs by allowing work teams to connect and share quickly and efficiently. In addition, Forrester predicts that enterprises will spend up to $1.8 billion on online collaboration tools in 2013.

This is a huge opportunity and Box.net has a relevant and timely story to tell. To aid these efforts, we have launched a comprehensive reseller program. It provides IT sales professionals with all the tools they need to promote Box.net’s Enterprise solution and offer support to customers, including sales training documentation, marketing materials, live training and webinars.  Resellers that take full advantage of the program will be well-positioned to enjoy new, high margin revenue streams. Companies like MTV Networks, Crocs Footwear, Big O Tires, Jump Studios and Driscoll’s have already adopted Box.net as their enterprise content management and collaboration platform.

People interested in learning more about our reseller program can visit http://www.box.net/about/reseller-program.

Post by Sean Lindo, Community Manager

Robots are going to be big in 2009 - you heard it here first.

That was just one of the predictions thrown down at the Silicon Valley PRSA event held on Dec. 3 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA - just down the road from Box HQ. Writers from The New York Times, TechCrunch, Barron’s, Financial Times and the San Jose Mercury News gathered to discuss what was big in ‘08 and what’s ahead in the new year. Some predictions were on the conservative side - Apple will come out with something noteworthy in ‘09 (I don’t know what it is, but I want it), the smartphone will continue to gain mainstream acceptance and Microsoft will still flirt with Yahoo (or vice versa).

And while everyone agreed that the economy will continue to be a drag for much of next year, there were some other interesting thoughts. TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington said he’s interested in cloud computing efforts, specifically how the cloud could reduce security vulnerabilities by moving applications away from one’s local hard drive into a secure and trustworthy set of hosted services. Other panelists noted that as IT copes with inevitable cuts in spending, companies will be “cobbling together the IT they need.” More than anything, companies need practical, reliable and affordable solutions that just work.

We can all agree that the uncertain economy will continue to present a challenge to all of us.  But you can be sure that Box is working on some really exciting stuff and all the values we embraced from the start leave us well positioned to deliver on what the market is looking for, even in these cautious times.

Besides predictions around Apple, Microsoft, Google, mobile, the enterprise and energy, San Jose Mercury News’ Elise Ackerman insisted that robotics is going to be big in 2009. So I was thinking, Box really needs to get on this bandwagon and lead the charge. That’s right - we need a Box.net robot. I know what I’d like to see - something on the boxy side, red and it has to use an iPhone.

What about you? What do you think the Box.net robot should look like? Got ideas or drawings?

Calling all Box fans! Are you ready? The 2008 Crunchies event from TechCrunch is almost upon us. The Crunchies give TechCrunch readers a chance to nominate a company or product they like and think deserves some industry recognition. If you love Box, run over to the Crunchies page and nominate us for the categories you think we deserve some props for. There are multiple categories, but we’d encourage you to consider us for the “Best design” or “Best enterprise”.

You can vote once a day till Wednesday, December 10, 2008 Midnight PST. From there, 5 finalists will be chosen for each category and another round of voting for finalists will be open from December 15, 2008 to January 5, 2009.  The winners will be announced at a live TechCrunch event on January 9.

But first thing’s first - if you love Box, vote for us and vote often. Spread the word!

We’re excited about participating in LeWeb ‘08, Europe’s leading conference on all things web. LeWeb, organized by Loic and Geraldine Le Meur, runs December 9-10 and will bring together some great speakers and many of the industry’s most respected voices like Michael Arrington, Dan Farber, Om Malik, Kara Swisher and Robert Scoble.

Box.net has also been selected as one of 30 start-ups from around the world that will be considered for LeWeb’s Start-up Competition. Box, along with the other selected startups, will be judged by representatives from TechCrunchUK, Google, Sun, Microsoft, GigaOM and British Telecom, among others. While we’ve grown in many ways since our founding in 2005, the spirit, energy, and excitement that’s driven us from the beginning are all alive and well at Box! LeWeb will provide a prominent forum for us to share our story and vision for how people can manage and share content in creative ways and on multiple platforms.

We look forward to a great event and hope to see you in Paris!