Friday, October 14th, 2011

Why Box is Giving iOS Users Massive Amounts of Free Cloud Storage

By

Mobility is catalyzing a massive shift in power in the technology world. The rampant adoption of a new set of devices – iPhones, iPads, Androids – within today’s organizations is in turn sending shockwaves through the enterprise software landscape.

Looking across the traditional enterprise technology stack, we see a tremendous number of systems that are locked on premise, offering little value in a world that is increasingly mobile, social, and collaborative. And when it comes to sharing and managing our content, we’re nearing a breaking point. Today’s organizations are creating more data than ever before, need to share that information broadly yet securely, and have to support a growing diversity of mobile devices.

The enterprise giants who own today’s technology stack certainly don’t have the answer to this problem. Microsoft can’t meaningfully support iOS and Android without neutralizing the only advantage its proprietary mobile platform has to offer. And IBM, Oracle, and other leaders are still very much wedded to the client-server paradigm, for all the noise they’ve been making about the cloud.

Apple, on the other hand, gets mobility it a huge way. But it’s just not an enterprise-oriented company. In fact, Steve Jobs has made this point pretty clearly over the years. And iCloud is no exception. It is designed to help consumers seamlessly synchronize information across Apple-built devices and platforms, but falls (intentionally) short of solving the enterprise problem of cross-platform and cross-boundary sharing.

Will iCloud be a hit?  Absolutely. Will it make sense for the enterprise as a collaboration and cloud content management solution?  Probably not, or at least not at first.

With the announcement of iOS 5 and iPhone 4S, we immediately got to work on making Box for iPhone and iPad even more compelling.  Our iOS development team has tripled in the last year and we have a bunch of exciting updates in the works. Starting today, you’ll be able to enable AirPlay Mirroring from Box on the new iPhone 4GS, with other cool features coming in the next few weeks.

Analysts estimate that Apple will ship over 60 million iPhones and 30 million iPads this year alone, and many of these devices will make their way into the workplace, sanctioned or otherwise. But with iCloud focused on solving consumers’ synchronization challenge, how do we address the productivity and collaboration needs of mobile workers?

In fact, we’re so excited about the new iPhone and operating system, that we’re giving all iOS users 50GB of free space. Users just download the new version of our app or update their existing app to get their 50GB. The promotion lasts 50 days, but the free cloud storage lasts the lifetime of the account.  We hope you’ll see how powerful it is to have all of your critical business content available, at your fingertips, anytime and anywhere – and without ever having to worry about storage limitations.

All of our focus, determination, and efforts go into building the simplest, yet most scalable solution for sharing, managing, and accessing content from anywhere.  And we do mean anywhere.  In addition to our continued iOS offerings, we’ve launched all new versions of our Android app, released for the Android Tablet as well as an HTML5 version of our mobile web app, leading Forrester to name us #1 in mobile collaboration.  And we’re still not done.

As I promised back in June, Box is laser-focused on supporting businesses by combining storage and sharing with the efficiencies of the cloud. We’re enabling organizations to manage and share their information across various platforms, securely, and with extreme ease.

This is the future of enterprise mobility. We’re insanely excited to be a part of the revolution.  Thank you again, Steve!

Showing 28 comments

Clau October 14th, 2011

Thanks Aaron for offering this free promotion. I really needed cause I travel a lot and hated to carry my laptop with me…….

Charlie….

Allan Hunter October 14th, 2011

50GB! What’s not to like..

Anonymous October 14th, 2011

What is your real motive? given that there are only positive comments so far, are you moderating the ones that aren’t?

Mark Saldana October 15th, 2011

We don’t delete comments unless they’re spam or vulgar. Open discussion is welcomed!

-Mark

BoxFrustrated October 15th, 2011

I’ll tell you what’s not to like: the face that it’s almost impossible to use, since uploading folders is impossible. it’s 50Gb of documents you save from the iPad. Great.

Richard October 15th, 2011

learn to use the chrome plugin, people!

Richard October 15th, 2011

learn to use the chrome plugin, people!

Jonathan October 15th, 2011

I agree, it’s a handy backup next to my harddrive for all my family pictures, but the interface … Like you said: almost impossible to use.

What do you mean by ‘from the iPad’? I’m uploading from my mac.

Pointless in Seattle October 15th, 2011

How about an insanely small 25mb per file limit? Guess it is fine for small documents, but most of my decks won’t even come close. I suppose I will find some use for it, but not for backups and certainly not for any real usage. I can see why they offer 50gb, most people will never be able to even come close to that with such a limit on file size. I would rather pay a few bucks a month and get real functionality from the 50gb, then get a crappy one for free and be forced to pay $180 a year just for the privilege of using the space in a functional manner. It is a cute gimmick, but doesn’t come close to most of the options out there, free or not.

An Average Redditor October 15th, 2011

You have to pay for the desktop client, only 100mb file limit. Those might be minor disadvantages.

Ivan Kandi October 16th, 2011

Does this also apply for an existing customer? Did what was told butI don’t see the extra gigs yet.

Bias Voltage October 16th, 2011

I’m kind of liking this! I was a DropBox user. But I couldn’t upload folders. Now I can! (it’s called bulk upload). That’s a bigee. Yea, the 100 mb size limit is a bit of a pain. But if you search for documents that are more than that..not too many. And I can zip most of them and squeeze them in. Heck, I don’t know what their motivation is but I’m linking it!

FreebieLover October 16th, 2011

I’m having no trouble with the interface. Fast file uploads from my Mac too, and the collaboration features are great in a personal account. Will it meet what everyone needs? No, but for free it makes a lot of people’s lives a little simpler by having some real space to work with. Dropbox still has its uses, but you definitely got my attention. Thanks box.net

Shanes October 17th, 2011

Can you please explain the security for the free account? I cannot see any details unless the plan is Business or Enterprise – thanks…

Rob October 17th, 2011

Pages files uploaded from the iPad CANNOT be opened from Box.net. I get an error. That makes this kind of useless to me

Rob October 17th, 2011

Pages files uploaded from the iPad CANNOT be opened from Box.net. I get an error. That makes this kind of useless to me

Gabriel October 17th, 2011

my android cries ;(

nmarti October 18th, 2011

I’m an old MobileMe subscriber. Apple will discontinue the MobileMe services (gallery and iDisk) in june 2012, and I think that box.net, with the 50gb, is a GREAT substitute for iDisk. It is not a choice between iCloud or box, the 2 services work great together and are complementary.

Thanks for the 50 GB!

sigpibro October 18th, 2011

They are giving it away to attempt to get users hooked on the $15 per user per month fee for getting PC desktop syncing. I may have less space on dropbox but it doesn’t cost me extra unless I want more space to sync my documents from my desktop. Thanks but no thanks!

SadAndroid October 19th, 2011

I love Box. I really do. I just don’t understand why this promotion only applies to iOS customers. Are iOS users being rewarded with 50 GB just because Apple decided to release a new operating system?

I just feel like if you’re gonna have a promotion, have it apply to your entire audience and not just a select demographic.

I know I’m a whiner, but I just feel left out :(

Vic H October 19th, 2011

Box.net and the iPad work well together. I also use a 2011 MacBook Pro after a college kid severly damaged my Windows lap top by tripping over the power cord.

Android users should be well aware by now that that they are the windows users of the mobile world, a lot of pain and disappointment trying to match what you get from Apple and Apple partners.

IMHO Box.net out did Apple’s iCloud by a country mile and then some.

Anonymous October 20th, 2011

You can easily upload folders to dropbox using their desktop app. Just put a copy of what you want in your dropbox sync’ed folder and it starts uploading entire folder trees.

Macle October 21st, 2011

an the name of the plugin?

ree October 26th, 2011

Please make box app enable for uploading file. At least for images and video. Kind of useless if you got 50GB on iOS device but you couldn’t upload anything from it. Next app update maybe?

JF October 27th, 2011

Yes, syncing from desktop would be a killer feature, but 15 bucks is too much for it.

Godaii October 27th, 2011

It’s disaapointing that non ios users are offered only 10% of what ios users are being offered. I hope this changes!

A Critic November 7th, 2011

4GS?

Chrischan December 21st, 2011

I’ve had box for a while, but I never saw this promotion until today. I never used box since the storage limit was so small. But if I could get the 50GB that they offered here, I’d use it. I think they should have alerted me to this promo.