July 2018 Summaries

Box Relay, co-developed with IBM, is a solution designed to automate and streamline workflows for knowledge workers, addressing inefficiencies in traditional manual processes that hinder business activities like contract finalization and customer onboarding. The latest enhancements include content upload triggers that automatically initiate workflows when files are added to specified folders, greatly expanding the potential for workflow automation across various business functions. With integrations with systems like Salesforce, Oracle NetSuite, and ProntoForms, Box Relay connects external systems to automate tasks, ensuring seamless collaboration between field workers and corporate teams. The Workflow API further extends Relay's capabilities by allowing developers to link core business systems to automate processes without needing IT intervention. Additionally, pre-built templates in Relay facilitate quick setup for common processes such as contract review, employee onboarding, and content creation, ensuring compliance and efficiency in critical business operations.

At the Google Cloud Next 2018 event, Box showcased its latest integrations and innovations in cloud technology, emphasizing its collaboration with Google. Key announcements included the new Box for Gmail Add-on, which allows users to seamlessly attach and download files within Gmail, enhancing productivity and security. Additionally, Box highlighted its integration with G Suite, enabling users to create and edit Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides directly from the Box interface, facilitating efficient and secure content management. The event also featured discussions on leveraging Google Cloud AI through Box Skills to extract insights from unstructured data, thereby improving enterprise efficiency. Box's participation underscored its commitment to enhancing cloud strategies and integrating AI to streamline workflows, drawing significant interest from attendees eager to adopt these innovations.

BoxWorks 2018, scheduled for August 29-30 at Moscone West in San Francisco, offers an opportunity to explore the future of work and cloud content management through its Free Expo Pass. The event features a range of keynotes and discussions, including insights from Aaron Levie, Co-founder and CEO of Box, on the digital workplace, and Jeetu Patel, Chief Product Officer of Box, on digital transformation strategies. Additionally, Stephanie Carullo, Chief Operating Officer of Box, will moderate a panel featuring industry experts from companies like Amgen and The Coca-Cola Company to delve into cultural, organizational, and technological shifts in the workplace. Attendees will also have access to the Partner Pavilion, where they can connect with partners like Slack and Microsoft Office to learn about innovations in productivity and workflow automation. The event is highlighted by a closing keynote from Steve Kerr, NBA champion and Head Coach of the Golden State Warriors, ensuring a unique blend of business and sports insights.

On a warm Saturday in June, Box's Employee Resource Groups, Box LatinX and Box Belong, collaborated with Catholic Charities to host a soccer event called Futbol con Corazón 2018, aimed at raising funds for unaccompanied minors who fled their countries to escape dire circumstances. The event, co-sponsored by Box.org, the social impact initiative of Box, showcased the company's commitment to diversity and inclusion by supporting vulnerable children living in San Mateo. The funds raised are designated for affordable legal assistance and comprehensive services for these minors, with ongoing efforts to engage Box employees as translators and mentors. The event demonstrated Box's dedication to creating a supportive community and fostering a sense of belonging for those in need, highlighting the significant contributions from both employees and friends.

Box participated in the CIAB FEBRABAN 2018 in Sao Paulo, Brazil, showcasing its platform at Latin America's largest financial services convention, which attracted over 23,000 attendees. The event focused on emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Blockchain, and IoT, exploring their impact on social behavior and business dynamics. Box, alongside its strategic partner IBM, highlighted how its platform aids local and international enterprises in digital transformation by streamlining workflows and automating processes using IBM's Watson AI. Joel Benavides from Box emphasized the platform's role in helping regulated industries meet compliance and efficiency standards, while Renata Morelli from Zup IT Innovation noted the significant opportunities for Brazilian businesses to advance their digital capabilities with secure cloud content management solutions like Box.

Consistency in data storage is crucial, with classical transactional databases ensuring that once a transaction commits, changes are visible to all. However, according to the CAP theorem, maintaining consistency often sacrifices availability in network partition scenarios. Amazon's S3 prioritizes availability, adopting an eventual consistency model, which can lead to visibility delays post-commitment and potential data loss, particularly problematic when S3 is the primary data source. At Box, this issue manifests in their Analytics Infrastructure, relying on S3 as the source of truth, leading to duplicate entries due to eventual consistency. They counter this by implementing Snitch, a filesystem extending S3AFileSystem, which maintains a consistent meta-store in DynamoDB to monitor and resolve consistency issues. Snitch enhances reliability by performing additional checks and re-implementing certain functionalities to optimize performance, despite initial bottlenecks from DynamoDB's partition throttling. The system requires all components interacting with S3 to use Snitch to prevent metastore corruption, achieved by configuring the core-site.xml file to ensure Snitch's omnipresence across the Hadoop ecosystem. Over a year, Snitch has successfully mitigated numerous eventual consistency incidents, enhancing data reliability within Box's analytics operations.

Box has been named a leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Content Collaboration Platforms for the fifth consecutive year, reflecting its strong market position and ability to execute its vision. The recognition highlights the growing importance of Content Collaboration Platforms (CCPs) in driving digital transformation by optimizing business processes and enhancing productivity through easy deployment and user-friendly collaboration tools. Box's platform is designed to meet the diverse needs of digital workplaces and businesses, emphasizing security, compliance, and speed to value. The company integrates with various leading productivity applications and leverages machine learning technologies through Box Skills to enhance digital workplace capabilities. With a large global presence, including 69% of Fortune 500 companies, Box is recognized as a leader and visionary in the industry, continually receiving high scores for its extended collaboration capabilities.

Box has announced the acquisition of the Butter.ai team to enhance its intelligent search capabilities and improve the way users navigate unstructured information within the platform. Butter.ai, known for employing machine learning to solve everyday information retrieval challenges, will help Box deliver more contextualized, predictive, and personalized search results for its 85,000 customers. This collaboration is part of Box's broader strategy to invest in intelligence capabilities and transform business processes by extracting valuable insights from the growing amounts of data generated as organizations adopt cloud technologies. The integration of Butter.ai's expertise is expected to complement Box Skills, a framework launched to apply machine learning innovations to content, further enabling businesses to work smarter and unlock hidden insights.

Josh Feliciano, Senior Director of Collaboration at S&P Global's Workplace Services Group, plays a pivotal role in advancing the company's digital transformation by fostering a cohesive and collaborative digital workplace. With a background in IT services, Feliciano is committed to enhancing productivity and communication across S&P Global's diverse divisions, which are collectively focused on providing essential intelligence to global financial markets. Under his leadership, the company has streamlined its content management by integrating Box and Office 365, significantly reducing the maintenance burden on legacy infrastructure and enabling easier data access for approximately 24,000 employees worldwide. Feliciano's approach emphasizes internal collaboration, enabling business departments to drive their own projects while IT supports their initiatives, as evidenced by the successful integration of Salesforce.com and Box for improved data accessibility. His efforts have not only improved internal processes but also aligned with the broader goal of self-disruption to maintain S&P Global's competitive edge in an era of digital disruption.