Box Breaks out of the Box at Boxworks

While it is exciting to see 5000+ attendees at Boxworks, here in San Francisco and it is great to hear all the great features and additions that Box is adding to it's secure content management capabilities including 3D images, 360 images and video, there is a not so subtle change in what Box is doing. Box in aiming to be a digital destination with the addition of a Box/IBM built process/workflow capability called Relay and the recent acquisition of Wagon Analytics. Combine these new pieces with an emphasis on ease of use, an API to everywhere attitude, a strong reach out to developers and a pension for security in the cloud, Box is headed for something bigger in a mid range time frame.

Now it is going to take some time to mature each of these pieces, but Box has assembled some great pieces to offer it's droves of current customers which now stands at 65K+ and 60% of the Fortune 500. While the CEO, Aaron Levie, appears to be a young and enthusiastic guy, he is making the right moves to be a long term player in the digital era. This is good, but I was even more impressed with the speed that some of the box customers have implemented and delivered positive business outcomes. There were case studies a plenty for business types and workshops a plenty for the developers.

Net; Net:

Box has progressed from file sharing to secure enterprise content management in the cloud in a short period of time. Now that Box has made the content richer and they will be able to process and analyze it new ways, I can't wait to see the kind of digital platform they become over time.