Industry Insight: What the Cloud IT Revolution Means for Business
The enterprise It mural is in the midst of a period of tectonic alter and innovation. The shift to cloud infrastructure has made tasks such as storage and file sharing cheaper and more efficient than e'er before. At the aforementioned time, collaboration, document management, productivity, and a host of other processes are converging under the same cloud-hosted banner for both businesses and end users.
We've seen numbers such as $30 billion thrown around in terms of future opportunity in the productivity and collaboration marketplace. Aaron Levie has chosen this "an society of magnitude more than than the combined acquirement of all the players today." Levie, the co-founder and CEO of file-sharing and collaboration software provider Box, took his company public in 2022 with a focus on building a unified enterprise platform through Box (for Business).
Levie too believes there will be enough of market opportunity to go around. We spoke to the CEO about how the cloud landscape is changing, where Box fits in amongst the other players (spoiler: by integrating with all of them), what to look from the evolving enterprise platform in 2022, and what It innovation means for the hereafter of piece of work. Levie also offered some advice for other startup founders considering an initial public offering (IPO) and shared his thoughts on what a Trump administration means for tech.
PCMag: You've said that now is the most exciting time in history to be in It. Why?
Aaron Levie (AL): Look back on Information technology a decade ago. Most of your time within the Information technology organization or strategy was actually on activities that weren't particularly differentiating you from other companies. Everybody had to manage servers, middleware, a database, email systems, and networks, so all of your fourth dimension was spent on these tasks that, if you did information technology better than a competitor, none of your customers would notice—and few of your employees would even notice either.
Fast forward to today. Not merely accept we basically solved for storage and e-mail, but we've been able to move up the stack even further and solve more strategic bug for businesses, be it through digital marketing and better ways of collaborating, or using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to give you lot more insights well-nigh your business organization.
Then the flip side is that, because of the deject, nosotros take an abundance of applied science that tin do amazing things for you when you lot appoint all these tools, applications, and platforms. Information technology's not just enterprise vendors, either. It'southward the consumer companies too. You're getting the calibration of Google and its search engine applied to machine learning and computing, the power of Facebook applied to business with Workplace, and modern chat applications delivered to you in Slack. Information technology's all the best in enterprise technology, honed and optimized for consumer applications and vice versa. For Information technology, we're looking at all these exciting innovations and discovering all these new ways to deliver those capabilities to your company.
PCMag: You've talked a lot about the changing nature of work toward a more competitive, client-focused model. Taking a high-level view of the tech industry right now, how exactly is that playing out?
AL: Call back about all the engineering we just talked virtually entering the workplace and, simultaneously, we've got a new generation of workers and a new era of customer experiences and expectations. These things are all converging and causing companies to reimagine the mode they piece of work and operate.
We serve over sixty percent of the Fortune 500 and accept well-nigh 70,000 customers, so our purview is beyond a wide assortment of businesses, from GE and Uber to Airbnb and Coca Cola; it's a wide spectrum of digital disrupters and big companies who are transforming their businesses in a meaning manner. This is less true for an Airbnb or an Uber who already work in a modernistic manner, but it's really truthful for Box customers like Dow Chemical, GE, Coca Cola, Procter and Take a chance, etc. They're enabling new engineering science, allowing employees to share and communicate in real time, to collaborate across boundaries and borders, and to create new digital experiences that modify the style they collaborate and transact with customers. All of this technology, combined with businesses moving faster, is redefining what the workplace will await similar and changing the business concern operating model.
Traditional information hierarchies and chains of command no longer work in the digital age. You can't compete with Uber if you're moving information across your hierarchy the same way you have for 20 or xxx years using legacy tech and archaic processes.
It's an interesting confluence in applied science and operational change, and information technology'southward driving a meaning reimagination of what work is going to look like. The all-time manner to look at where that'south going is to look under the hood of a modern digital company and how they operate. It's 24/7, extremely flat, and is well-nigh sharing equally much information as possible with equally much transparency as possible. The earth is moving so chop-chop that, if yous're not on the same page with the aforementioned data, you're going to lose.
PCMag: Between Box, Dropbox and Evernote, Google Bulldoze and Microsoft OneDrive, plus players such as Salesforce buying Quip and a long listing of others, the cloud-based file storage, collaboration, and document management market is flush right at present. Where does Box fit into that landscape? And practise y'all envision the market shifting and playing out over the side by side few years?
AL: We desire to power how companies collaborate with ane another. If someone is working in Slack, Facebook Workplace, or Google Docs, and they can't pull data from Box or shop data back into Box, then we don't succeed in our mission. What we're really trying to do is exist embedded into all the unlike applications and services our customers are using, which means partnering with everyone, even the companies we compete with a piffling chip.
That's why we're partnered significantly with Microsoft, Google, and others. As information technology relates to some of our other consumer competitors, it'due south hard to say. You will see some consolidation because it'll be hard for many of the contained players to survive. That's non necessarily truthful for Dropbox, which is more established, but mayhap for some of the longer tail players. Our focus is on enterprise. Working with companies to store, manage, and interact on their information in the most secure way possible. We think at that place will exist a multimillion dollar opportunity equally more applications motion to the cloud, and that'southward what we're targeting.
PCMag: I as well want to talk nigh the broader cloud space. Box Zones actually changed the perception of the level of control enterprises can exert over their cloud storage, letting users allocate their own storage resource across Amazon Web Services (AWS) and IBM clouds. Practise yous encounter that as the get-go of a larger trend in the public deject landscape?
AL: If you lot look at all the change we've been talking well-nigh—the way companies want to work and the applied science they want to utilize—that'southward a lot of exciting innovation we'll starting time to see in a big way. There's also a counter alter, which is an increase in regulation and privacy requirements when you're doing business effectually the world. So, layer in those ii things: increased regulation and security constraints and, at the same time, the demand to movement faster as a company than e'er before. Cloud providers have to resolve both of those diametrically opposed challenges.
We are uniquely focused on doing that. Nosotros want to enable companies to share and collaborate, and exercise so while adhering to security, regulatory, and governance issues, peculiarly if you're a large multinational company. Box Zones lets customers share data in seven countries effectually the globe, to adhere to local regulation requirements but too to collaborate deeply because we've bathetic away that complication for end users. That's the future of enterprise data: solving very hard problems that enterprises themselves don't actually want to solve, and doing so in a way that's still unproblematic for end users.
PCMag: On that subject, I as well want to bear upon cloud and enterprise security. What are your nigh pressing concerns in terms of cloud security right now and how is the tech manufacture responding?
AL: There are 2 ways we think about security. One is the level of security the cloud providers themselves offer. That'due south everything from the technology stack and data center to the mode the software is designed, tested, and audited. Operationally, that'south how we call up nearly it: Are nosotros protecting against potential threats that might be occurring every single 24-hour interval?
The other half of it is the product and usability side of security. How are humans interacting with our engineering science and how do we go along those user interactions secure? That's washed in concert with the mobile device players, with web browsers, and with identity management systems. On that side, we need to make sure the security mechanisms are as usable equally possible. Otherwise people won't actually adopt the tools and services to keep them secure over the long run.
The threat landscape is a bit different. On the end user side, information technology'south things like social engineering science and phishing attempts, all the ways attackers attempt to pilfer credentials. Then, in the operational mural, nosotros're dealing with things like beast force attempts and DDoS attacks, and we take to piece of work to stay secure on both sides. Information technology's a very dynamic landscape and you lot take to work extremely hard to stay alee of information technology.
PCMag: Let'south dig a chip deeper into the Box product roadmap as Box moves across file sharing into productivity and workflow tools such as Box Relay. How volition the platform evolve in 2022?
AL: The two big dimensions for us are to build products that are easy to apply and as well very secure. You'll see a big focus on terminate-user experience around collaboration this yr. Box Notes volition experience a series of updates rolling out this year to ensure better collaboration and workflows. On the back end, nosotros're investing more in advanced security capabilities and analytics to help customers do more with their data and generate insights.
On the platform side, expect some cool things on the integration forepart. There's a lot more to come to fruition within our Facebook partnership and more than integrations with Microsoft and other partner technologies. We'll also be announcing integrations with fifty-fifty more companies and partners. Nosotros also want customers to build their own digital experiences on Box. When a customer has their own custom awarding, whether it's a client portal or a mobile app, nosotros want to empower them to build the best product or integration possible with our APIs and programmer platform.
PCMag: I talk to a lot of startup founders and entrepreneurs in the early and middle stages of building out Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) companies. Ane of the about stressful decisions is e'er whether or non to get public, and if so, choosing the right time. There'due south been a lot of talk nigh Dropbox going public this year, along with several other loftier-profile startups such as Snap and Airbnb.
Can you talk a bit about your experience taking Box public? Now two years subsequently, exercise you run the visitor differently now than y'all did before? Tin you share any communication for other CEOs considering it?
AL: We've had a not bad experience and then far being public. Stock price is ane way to determine it, but I would say that'southward more most building confidence with Wall Street. More of import is how your employees deal with the IPO. We've been public now for 2 years. Information technology has given us additional credibility with customers, and a lot of robustness in being a public company and delivering on those results.
For u.s., it's been positive, but we're at a certain value where it makes sense. It'south not necessarily something y'all should do if you lot're a $50 one thousand thousand revenue company. We're going to exercise $400 1000000 in acquirement this twelvemonth, which is why I'one thousand confident in united states of america existence public. That said, it may not be the right conclusion for every startup.
PCMag: Finally, as a Silicon Valley CEO and given your own prominent presence on Twitter, exercise you take any thoughts on how President Trump, our new prodigious Tweeter-in-Primary, will affect the tech manufacture?
AL: There are a lot of challenges and opportunities correct now in this land in terms of the digital mural simply also around the time to come of jobs broadly. We have a massive amount of technological change and transformation occurring. We call up of things like security, privacy, encryption, and digital regulation as tech manufacture issues just, if nosotros expect around in ten or 15 years, these issues will bear on every manufacture: transportation, life sciences, healthcare, etc. These tech issues will be important in driving America forward as a thriving economic system or...suppressing the land's potential.
Trump's administration is coming into power at a time where there are all these important problems to deal with. There will be important decisions made on all of them and more than, modernizing our regulations to support the digital transformation taking place. Take encryption and privacy: If we don't have extremely constructive encryption and security, then we won't be able to drive the right level of privacy to give end users confidence to employ our platforms.
We also need to set for a coming age of AI and balance the jobs that volition likely become abroad by creating a path to capitalize on all the new chore opportunities that will emerge. This is a broad set of problems. If Trump surrounds himself with people who testify to be thoughtful and knowledgeable on these issues and can find ways to enable the digital transformation, I'd exist optimistic. Plain, at this point, it'southward too early to tell.
Almost Rob Marvin
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