Box Launches New Connector to Enterprise Content-Management Systems

The idea is to enable better collaboration and access to content among employees and allow easier access from mobile devices, including netbooks, tablets, and iOS or Android smartphones.

Cloud storage and collaboration service Box, formerly known as Box.net, launched a new enterprise content-management connector March 24 that works hand-in-hand with its storage platform.

Box's ECM Cloud Connect, facilitated via a partnership with EntropySoft, helps enterprises augment the reach of their on-premise ECM systems by linking them to Box's cloud content-management platform. The idea is to enable better collaboration and access to content among employees and allow easier access from mobile devices, including netbooks, tablets, and iOS or Android smartphones.

The new service enables organizations to move content automatically between on-premise ECM and Box's cloud system. For example, if you drop a photo into the Box folder on a laptop, it automatically shows up in an iPhone or other device that also has the Box software.

ECM Cloud Connect links Box to more than 40 other systems, including Microsoft SharePoint and EMC Documentum.

"Basically, this allows a user to share, manage and access your stuff from anywhere, from any device, at any time," Box marketing director Dan Levin told eWEEK. "We're seeing adoption from businesses across the spectrum, from smaller, sophisticated companies like LinkedIn and Pandora, to large multinational organizations like Hearst."

The original Box provides a cloud-based platform for storing and sharing data and the ability to seamlessly access data from devices like smartphones and tablets. What the platform needed was a connector to enterprise ECMs, and that's what the EntropySoft contribution entails.

"What we found out is that most of these enterprises already have content-management systems, especially the larger companies, who use them for records management, asset management, workflow or other things," Levin said. "They are reluctant to simply abandon ECM and migrate all data to the cloud, so Cloud Connect gives them the best of both worlds."

Box also helps ensure compliance to corporate records-management and archiving policies for content stored in the Box cloud. Using ECM Cloud Connect, existing and future Box customers can synchronize content between Box and those 40 on-premise ECM systems; automatically archive content archiving from Box to on-premise ECM systems; and transfer content from on-premise ECM systems to Box, or vice versa.

Box also has its own online applications market. Box Apps Marketplace features more than 150 integrated partner applications, such as Salesforce, Google Apps and NetSuite.

Pricing for ECM Cloud Connect is available upon request, Levin said.

Box.net, which opened for business in 2005, now claims more than 60,000 customers in both the consumer and enterprise sectors; the latter includes a high percentage (73 percent) of Fortune 500 companies, Levin said.