New Tech Players Utilize Old Playbook at BoxWorks

Posted by Tomas Cohen on October 6th, 2014

Startups are often successful because of their ability to thumb their noses at the status quo, but these days there are two tools that young tech gurus are borrowing from their predecessors. Box unveiled a new channel strategy at BoxWorks this week. Two specific strategies were originally used by computing giants Apple and Microsoft Corp. The Apple model involves enticing developers to make products that work with your technology as they did for the iPhone and the apps that operate on it, and the Microsoft model involves the splitting of money from customer orders by using a wide-ranging marketing force of independent salespeople.

Box is a software startup, which helped to the concept of a virtual file cabinet for businesses more widely accepted. This file cabinet is used by employees of corporations for all types of documents, including Word and Excel documents, to full-blown marketing campaigns or any other types of documents. These can all then be accessed and worked on by anyone who is given proper access from a computer, smartphone or tablet.

Levie opines that the big tech giants that are offering similar services are touching only on the smaller issues and that they are missing the big picture when it comes to remote file storage and sharing capabilities. To Levie’s perspective, there is more to just offering additional remote storage. Instead, he wishes to help organizations change the way they work through their products.

In its effort to differentiate from the tech giants, Box is relying on an old playbook as it seeks to incorporate other programs into its product and develop a vast sales force of independent marketers.

Currently, Levie explains that they are adding to their list of 47,000 independent developers who are making software for Box services, and that Microsoft and Salesforce.com Inc. have both agreed to incorporate their workplace technology in the BoxWorks product.

Integrating various applications through Box is the main target. For example, Box sees a scenario where a middle manager is able to save notes from Salesforce.com, and then utilize Jive to communicate information to colleague who can work together with that middle manager to create a PowerPoint presentation for a new client.

This platform style is something that many young startup software companies have learned from their predecessors.

They are also learning that sales is a key component and that they will have to team up with some bit players to push their products to the widest possible audience. Sales of their products through packages bundled with internet services, personal computers, phone packages and software will all be facilitated through relationships with large companies like AT&T and Dell, Inc. These are known as “channel partners” and Microsoft used them voraciously in the 1990’s to build their empire. Box claims to have a similar model in line, and that they have over a thousand of these partners at present.

At BoxWorks, Levie confirmed that Box has focused on building these partnerships over the past 18 months and that these relationships with developers and sales partners are an important part of their growth strategy.

Author:

Tomas Cohen is a security enthusiast and analyst covering the most significant security topics and trends prevalent worldwide. He also involves in the technology related to Cloud Security, Boxworks, Google Drive Security etc.,