It’s no secret that what has been called the “online storage gang” in the past is now mostly defunct.

This classic post in the early days of Techcrunch profiled an inspiring list of startups, as well as larger companies, all competing to power peoples’ move to the cloud. Recently, a few of the more noteworthy services have shutdown, proving just how difficult it can be to be an early service in an emerging market. So many important lessons have been learned over the past few years - and at Box we’re well poised to continue our success as we move forward. I think our particular convictions since the very beginning of Box have enabled us to produce a product and service that keeps us excited and pushing the space forward. Om Malik recently picked up on this distinction, and has written a post which helps explain the misalignment of customer expectations (read: what they’ll pay for) and the offerings of online storage/collaboration services. One example of a grave misunderstanding in this space is that you can fund your operations on advertising revenue; check out Om’s post for more details…

When writing the original ‘business plan’ for Box.net soon after we launched in March of 2005 (yes, we’re old school), we concluded the following:

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A variety of important and much needed services, all of which rely on a centralized server environment, have created extensive business opportunities for a company like Box.net. As consumers begin to use multiple computers more regularly, decentralized data becomes a noticeable and relevant concern. A growing number of home-users and small businesses are looking to access their files and data from a variety of locations, including personal, office, library and public computers. They also need to be able share their documents and photos with other users and don’t want to or can’t (because of size) resort to emailing everything. Box.net provides this access, and will offer many tools that will collaborate to allow complete data access regardless of device or location. The potential market size is over 100 million when considering the number of people with broadband connections available to them at home, libraries, and work.

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These needs exist today as apparently as ever, and we’re thrilled to be in a position to continue and build on our original vision. As noted above, since the very first day we started Box.net, we’ve focused on making it easy to share and collaborate. We have also focused on openness and having an API soon after we launched - which has enabled users to conveniently access their files from other applications and environments. Additionally, we launched OpenBox last fall to support the integration of third-party services to enable users to do more with their data. We think these efforts (and some very exciting upcoming initiatives!), coupled with a revenue model focusing on enterprise vs. personal use-cases, have enabled us to build a sustainable and strong business.

In other news, we have an exciting slate of updates over the next few weeks (including localization of Box.net in your favorite language!).

-Aaron

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 6th, 2008 at 5:02 pm and is filed under New Features, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.