June 2016 Summaries

Companies face significant challenges when migrating to the cloud, often using inefficient and insecure methods such as the "lift-and-shift" approach or ad hoc solutions, which can hinder productivity and fail to capitalize on native cloud features. Some businesses even delay transitioning due to these complications, resulting in substantial financial costs and missed opportunities for enhanced collaboration and innovation. Box introduces Box Shuttle, a new service designed to facilitate a smooth and efficient transition to the cloud by combining advanced software migration tools with the expertise of Box Consulting. This service is tailored to each customer's needs, enabling them to migrate large volumes of content securely and intelligently while applying metadata and retention policies. Box Shuttle offers a structured migration plan to ensure predictability and reduced risk, helping businesses realize the benefits of cloud technology more quickly. The service, available in beta as of Fall 2016, aims to provide greater visibility and control over the migration process, ultimately accelerating the shift to the cloud and enhancing data management.

BoxDev is returning as part of the annual BoxWorks 2016 conference, taking place from September 6-8 in San Francisco. This event is geared towards developers who are building enterprise applications using Box's platform, offering a unique opportunity to learn about the latest tools and products through tailored sessions and Lighting Talks with Box product managers, engineers, partners, and customers. Attendees will have the chance to engage with fellow developers, receive hands-on support from Box Platform experts, and explore additional tools and services in the Dev Pavilion. The conference also features keynote sessions, including a conversation between Aaron Levie and Diane Green from Google Cloud, and culminates in a highly anticipated afterparty. Developers are encouraged to register for a Developer Pass to take full advantage of the BoxDev experience.

A Forrester Total Economic Impact™ study commissioned to evaluate Box's benefits revealed that an 8,000-employee organization utilizing Box achieved a 405% return on investment, reduced IT spending by $2.4 million by phasing out storage and legacy ECM systems, and avoided $3 million in costs through enhanced security and compliance. Box is praised for its robust, enterprise-grade features and its user-centric design, which facilitates effortless and widespread adoption. By emphasizing accessibility and user-friendliness, Box enables companies to achieve critical IT objectives while ensuring high user engagement and adoption rates.

BoxWorks 2016, scheduled for September 6-8 in San Francisco, is a major event for business and technology leaders to explore future industry trends and leverage Box's capabilities to enhance their digital leadership. The event features prominent speakers such as Google's Diane Green, Uber's Joe Sullivan, and Microsoft's Peggy Johnson, offering attendees insights from their vast experience. Attendees can benefit from inspirational keynotes, hands-on breakout sessions, and tactical partner discussions designed to elevate their use of Box, improve business operations, and foster career advancement. The conference encourages connections among Box customers, showcases upcoming features and product releases, and provides opportunities to collaborate with Box partners to enhance the Box experience. With a high rate of repeat attendance from previous years, BoxWorks promises a comprehensive understanding of how innovative companies operate and grow, supplemented by networking opportunities and expert advice on custom app development using the Box API.

Nokavision has developed a Mendix module for integrating the Box Platform, allowing developers to incorporate Box's secure content collaboration features into web and mobile applications built on Mendix. This integration facilitates the management and delivery of various file types across devices, leveraging Box's capabilities such as metadata management, search, versioning, mobile capture, and enterprise-grade security. The Box Module for Mendix simplifies the use of Box's functionalities by encapsulating the entire Box API, enabling developers to utilize advanced document management features through simple Java Actions without building from scratch. Launched at Mendix World 2016, the module demonstrated its ease of use with a demo app that creates personalized magazines by integrating Mendix with Box, showcasing how content can be seamlessly managed and delivered within applications.

The leader of business analytics and data science at Box discusses the company's initiatives in using data expertise to support nonprofits and communities, highlighting a hack-a-thon event at the White House focused on foster care and technology. The event emphasized the need for a multifaceted approach to address complex problems in the foster care system, such as the requirement for a new legal framework and innovative technology to improve foster care services. The author notes the potential of existing technology to address these challenges, such as creating secure, cloud-based digital lockers for foster youth documentation, and highlights the transformative role of big data in improving the quality of court decisions in foster care cases. The overarching goal is to ensure the right data is available to the right people at the right time, with the appropriate security measures, to enhance outcomes for foster youth. The author expresses excitement about Box's ongoing role in these efforts and encourages support for nonprofits like ThinkOfUs, TeenForce, and iFoster, which are actively involved in this area.

Box's World Tour in Tokyo concluded with the announcement of a strategic partnership with Fujitsu, Japan's leading ICT company, aiming to integrate Box into Fujitsu's cloud services and develop industry-specific solutions. This collaboration includes deploying Box to 160,000 Fujitsu employees, creating global communication products, and exploring CRM and ECM solutions for sectors like manufacturing and public services, enhanced by advanced features such as security and palm vein authentication. Fujitsu plans to offer local data storage in Japan through its data center and launch Box as part of its MetaArc service in 2017, enhancing cloud adoption and market expansion in Asia. Additionally, Box introduced Box Zones, providing customers with flexible data storage region options, such as Europe or Asia, to accommodate complex data residency needs, thereby increasing connectivity and collaboration among Japanese businesses.

Flex, a large supply-chain solutions provider, successfully integrated Box's modern content management platform with Microsoft Office 365 to address the challenges of outdated systems and improve file sharing and collaboration among its extensive workforce. By adopting Box, Flex eliminated 1,500 FTP servers, reducing maintenance and support costs while gaining superior file-syncing and integration capabilities with their Microsoft Office suite. The transition provided enhanced security and usability, allowing Flex to maintain operational efficiency across its vast operations. This integration exemplifies Box's ability to support large-scale enterprises and highlights its potential benefits for other companies seeking to address similar digital transformation challenges.

Kensaku Komatsu, Senior Technical Manager at NTT Communications, discusses the integration of Box Platform with SkyWay to enhance video conferencing applications by combining secure content sharing with real-time chat and video features. The collaboration aims to address the limitations of current video conferencing tools, which often compromise content quality, by allowing users to access high-fidelity content directly rather than through low-quality streams. By utilizing Box's secure sharing and high-quality rendering capabilities alongside SkyWay's real-time video streaming via WebRTC, the resulting application, named box-skyway, offers a modern solution that enables users to authenticate, select, and share files seamlessly within video conferences. The application leverages the Box Content API for secure collaboration and synchronizes content sharing using SkyWay's MultiParty API, ensuring that each participant receives a high-resolution version of the shared content. This approach not only improves the quality of collaborative video conferencing but also creates new possibilities for remote work and education, although its functionality is limited by WebRTC's lack of support on browsers like Safari and Internet Explorer. The box-skyway application's source code is publicly available on GitHub for Box account holders interested in exploring this innovative solution.

Traditional organizations across various sectors are navigating their digital transformation journeys, with some like General Electric pioneering their industry's efforts, while others are just beginning to tackle challenges such as change management and customer engagement. Companies that fail to digitize risk facing disruption or becoming obsolete. Lessons can be drawn from technology leaders like Uber, Netflix, Amazon, Facebook, and Google, who have either reinvented business models or created entirely new ways of interaction. These companies adopted unique practices and mindsets that propelled them beyond traditional norms. A new eBook, "Top 10 Lessons from Technology Entrepreneurs on Digital Transformation," explores universal lessons and best practices applicable across industries, particularly for companies embarking on digital endeavors for the first time. The eBook offers guidance on thinking big, creating beloved digital products, driving growth, and organizing a high-performing team, providing insights from industry leaders to support organizations in their digital transformation efforts.