Today, Box.net unveiled a brand new version of its cloud storage platform. Box’s CEO Aaron Levie says that in creating the new version of Box, the company focused on three key themes—simple, open and mobile. The company now stores 300 million documents on its platform (more than the Library Of Congress) and has accumulated 5 million users (up from 4 million last year), with hundreds of thousands of businesses using the application.
Levie says that the new version is much simpler, enabling a new, easier set of workflows on the applications, The startup rewrote the entire front end of the application with a new UI. The first new feature of the platform is that the new Box is built entirely around viewing content, with relevant document suggestions, and a more seamless document viewing experience. The new viewing experience uses HTML5 technology to offer a more user-friendly multimedia experience with the ability to drag and drop files in folders, preview files, and more.
Another major addition to the Box.net is more collaborative features around file sharing and document storage. The UI sort of looks like Yammer meets FriendFeed; but within Box.net. Features include real-time activity updates (powered by FriendFeed’s Tornado).
Box will also be adding an application marketplace that work with Box.net. These include Salesforce, Google Apps, NetSuite, Yammer and others. It’s important to note that these are outside services and applications that work with Box’s platform as opposed to within Box’s UI.
This new version of Box.net will be rolling out over the next month to customers.
Box.net, which has raised $15 million in funding in 2010, has continued to update its offering with new mobile apps, storage plans, file syncing and more.
Box says that it has seen 70,000 downloads of its Android app and 250,000 downloads combined of its iOS apps, which include and iPad and iPhone app. Levie particularly highlighted the growth in the Android platforms and the possibility of the Android tablets.
Tim Wagner, the VP of enterprise sales for Samsung, said that the company is considering preloading Box.net on its tablets in the future and will be working with Box to bring amore integrated experience to users.
After starting as a college business project in 2005, Box was officially launched in March of 2006 with the vision of connecting people, devices and networks. Box provides more than 8 million users with secure cloud content management and collaboration. They say their platform “allows personal and commercial content to be accessible, sharable, and storable in any format from anywhere”.
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