As mobile devices get more powerful and begin to access more private or enterprise content, there is an opportunity for players to vie for the cloud storage market behind the mobile devices, said Al Hilwa, director of Application Development Software research at IDC.

"Integrating with apps that need to store data is clearly a key way to do this and Box appears to get the message on it," Hilwa told us Monday. "In the long run you would expect the mobile platform owners to play in this space more aggressively," Hilwa said.

Monday's addition of OneCloud for Android was a no-brainer for the enterprise-class productivity services provider given IDC's recent estimate that Google's mobile OS will continue to control a majority share of the global mobile market through 2016. The move is also expected to help drive Box's OneCloud global expansion plans.

"A tremendous shift is taking place in Europe [with businesses] looking for solutions that help them move to the cloud and transition away from costly, inflexible legacy technologies," said Box CEO Aaron Levie.

International Expansion

Box opened its first international headquarters in London last week to support a growing European customer base that has doubled in the past 12 months to 120,000 businesses. According to Box, 50 percent of the company's 11 million users are located outside of the United States.

Significant barriers exist for European organizations when collaborating both internally and externally, said Alys Woodward, research director for European Business Analytics, Enterprise Collaboration and Social Solutions at IDC.

"Collaborative, content-sharing tools like Box are extremely helpful in breaking these barriers down," Woodward said. "As the speed of business increases, the ability to share information and collaborate quickly and easily is vital for organizations to keep pace with this acceleration. The alternative is to fall behind." (continued...)

1  |  2  |  Next Page >

 

Lilou H: