Box OneCloud Brings 30-Plus Enterprise Applications To New Mobile, Cloud-Based Storage Platform
Cloud storage platform Box has long offered a web-based app directory that includes apps for services like Salesforce, and others that enhance the storage platform's capabilities.
Context & Ripple Effects
OneCloud is the mobile extension of a strategy Box has been building since it opened its OpenBox integration platform back in 2007, which first let third-party web applications like Salesforce plug into its storage. The October 2011 $81M round led by Salesforce and SAP at a $600M-plus valuation effectively bankrolled this pivot from commodity file storage toward being an enterprise work hub.
The launch also lands a month after Box's February Android push with free 50GB storage, so OneCloud completes a deliberate one-two punch: buy users with storage, then bind them with business applications. Eight major outlets — VentureBeat, Ars Technica, Engadget, Business Insider, InfoWorld, Computerworld, CNET among them — picked up the story on day one, an unusually broad syndication footprint for a product launch.
First-order effects
- Box users get native mobile access to 30-plus enterprise applications — including Salesforce integrations that already existed on the web directory — making the phone or tablet a front door to workflows previously confined to desktop browsers.
- Salesforce, both an investor and a marquee integration partner, gains a mobile distribution surface for its CRM at no incremental cost, deepening a vendor relationship that began with the 2011 investment.
Second-order effects
- Rival cloud storage vendors face pressure to match application ecosystems rather than compete on gigabytes alone — a race Box itself started by giving away 50GB on Android just weeks earlier, suggesting storage is becoming a loss-leader feature.
- The enterprise ISVs in the directory gain a mobile channel they did not have to build themselves, shifting some distribution leverage toward whichever storage platform controls the app shelf.
Third-order effects
- If storage platforms keep absorbing the application layer, the long-run structure of enterprise software tilts toward hub-and-spoke platforms where file systems, not operating systems or suites, become the integration point for line-of-business tools.
- That dynamic sets up the next battleground as incumbents like Microsoft respond by tying their own productivity suites to their own clouds — the pattern Box's investor Salesforce has already modeled with Chatter and Service Cloud integrations.
The trend: Enterprise cloud storage is evolving from a per-gigabyte commodity into a platform play, with vendors competing on the breadth of business applications they can orchestrate around files.