Box.net vs SkyDrive

The popular online file sharing service DropBox finally launches a version for business - DropBox for Teams. It differs from the regular DropBox by two things. First, it has an administrative panel to manage users and access rights. In the admin panel you can also pay for all business users. Second, when sharing files inside DropBox for Teams account, the free disk space is not decreased. (In the regular DropBox version if somebody shares for example 100 MB file to you, your disk space is reduced by 100 MB). However, DropBox wants business version users not to think about the free space at all. DropBox for Teams provides at least 1TB of free space. This is 2 times bigger than in the business version of the main competitor - Box.net

A couple of years ago it was funny to watch the cheeky advertising by Box.net, in which the startup attacked the giant SharePoint. But it turned out that Box.net can not only do a noisy PR, but also can effectively run its business and develop the high-quality product. This week the company raised another $81 million of investments from SAP and Salesforce, and its market value was estimated at $600 million. Box.net currently has 100 thousand customers (7 million users). 77% of Fortune 500 companies use Box.net. And this summer the startup succeeded in signing its biggest contract - with Procter & Gamble for 18,000 seats. Box.net is the mobile collaboration market leader according to Forrester. So what is the secret of their success?

Box.net CEO, Aaron Levy, came up with a new beautiful term "Smart Enterprise". Aaron opposes it Benioff's "Social Enterprise", hinting that a company (and business applications) in result should smart rather than social. And the main goal of business application is not to connect person to person but to connect person to needed content. So in general, all this stuff is quite abstract and unclear, but it sounds good and perfectly fits into Box.net mission - to provide a single, centralized cloud content repository for Enterprise. Box.net wants to integrate content from all (isolated) business applications, computers, mobile devices, offices to ensure that each employee can access the right content at the right time. To achieve this, Box.net has released two major components: Box for Microsoft Office and Box Sync.

Forrester Research, the technology and market research company decided to create a report on the mobile collaboration market. Why mobile? After all, there are no purely mobile collaborative solutions. Mobile access - is just a feature in such systems. But apparently, this feature has become so important that it deserves a separate report. So the results of Forrester research - on the chart. The results - are quite strange. For example, Google (which provides the cool mobile access to almost all their services) is behind the most leaders. And Microsoft - is absent (while it's new department Skype has the best mobile strategy). But the chart leader - Box.net is really showing the great progress in recent months.

Next week Microsoft will officially launch its online office suite Office 365, and of course, the major competitors, Google and Box.net, want to spoil this party. First, they have integrated their solutions. Now Box.net users can edit any stored document in the Google Docs online editors. In addition, they can (in just one click) create new documents in Box.net folders by opening Google Docs apps. Recall that Box.net also features the similar integration with Zoho Docs, so now users will have a choice. Box.net CEO, Aaron Levy, says that he played with the beta version of Office 365 and that it’s lacking the power and functionality of the bunch Box + Google Docs.

Last week, Amazon launched the new online file storage service Amazon Cloud Drive. And taking into account reputation of Amazon, as the online storage market leader, this event, of course, deserves our attention. Let's consider the advantages and disadvantages of this service compared to key competitors. The main parameters - are shown in the table (below). It's turns out that the main advantage of Amazon Cloud Drive - if free 5GB account  with maximum file size of 2GB. However, its main drawback negates this advantage: you can not share this large file with anyone. Amazon Cloud Drive doesn't allow to share files publicly or protected by password. I.e. the only way of using this service - is a private storage for backup or enhancing your productivity.

As known, Box.net always positioned itself as a Sharepoint alternative. The entire marketing strategy of Box.net has been built on Sharepoint criticism. They created billboards criticizing Sharepoint, distributed T-shirts with the sign "No Sharepoint", collected negative reviews about Sharepoint in Twitter, etc. But business - is business. And Sharepoint - is Sharepoint. This is perhaps the most successful IT system over the last several years. And it's linked to so many others business applications that persuading a company to change Sharepoint to something else - is unreal. So Box.net accepted this fact and came up with the new strategy: now Box.net will be the front-end to Sharepoint. And also to others ECM systems.

SkyDrive, Microsoft’s online storage service continues to take on Dropbox and add support for new platforms. Following the applications for Windows Phone and iPhone, Microsoft has released the desktop client for Windows and Mac OS (OS X Lion). Also, the SkyDrive's mobile interface has been optimized for iPad tablets. SkyDrive for desktop works in the usual way - it creates a folder on your computer and all the files that you copy to this folder are automatically synced with your online account, as well as with your other computers or mobile devices that are running SkyDrive. And if in the online account you create a shared folder for your work-group, the service will be continuously syncing files between the computers of co-workers.

This year, marketers in Enterprise 2.0 companies haven't prepared  well for the April Fools' Day, perhaps because it fell on Sunday. The only diligent company was Google, that released several April 1 products. One of them - is GMail Tap - the new app for mobile GMail, which allows to quickly type text with just two buttons - dot and dash (watch video above). At the same time Microsoft, which recently was very productive in funny videos, at that time only unveiled the new interface for the online file storage and sharing service SkyDrive - SkyCMD. It allows you to manage your files using the classic DOS-syntax and the command line:

So, Microsoft finally lost its fear of rival mobile platforms. Previously, the company launched the number of applications for the iPhone/iPad and even is working on the full-featured mobile Office for the iPad. And now it decided to make happy the Android users. Of course, it started with the apps for which being cross-platform is more important - the file storage SkyDrive and notebook/organizer OneNote. From now any files (including OneNote notebooks) can be synchronized between your Android-smartphone and your online SkyDrive account. However, there is a catch. While SkyDrive for Android - is completely free, the mobile OneNote app - is free only for up to 500 notes. After reaching this limit, you'll have to pay $4.99 (one-time fee) - and the restriction will be removed.

Microsoft continues to troll Google services with funny videos. At this time, they take on Google Docs. According to the scenario a group of young co-workers wants to creat a document and starts working on it in Google Docs. Naive guys don't know that Google Docs are only suitable for simple tasks and drawing a planetary system in Google Docs - is impossible. But it's possible in Microsoft SkyDrive. Even not in the Skidrive itself (it also can't do such complicated formatting) but in the desktop MS Office, that can edit the document simultaneously with the online SkyDrive editor. Note that Microsoft has removed the title Windows Live Office, which was used from the start to refer the online office, and now is using SkyDrive (that formerly was used to refer only the file storage).

After the recent Microsoft's announcement that it's working on Office for iPad (by the way, today OneNote has become available for iPad), today's launch of the SkyDrive app for iPhone is not very surprising. From now the SkyDrive users can access their files on the iPhone, open them, share to others, create new folders and synchronize files to the online account. The same application has appeared for Windows Phone 7.5 (watch the video below). And judging by some vacancies that Microsoft posts on the job-sites, the company is already working on the SkyDrive version for Android. Recall, SkyDrive offers free 25GB of cloud storage, which is much larger than its main competitors: Box.net, DropBox and Google Docs.

Microsoft has released an update fro its online collaboration suite Office 365, which includes 30 new features. The most important of them are support for Windows Phone 7.5, opportunity to edit documents stored in SharePoint Online on Windows Phone, Lync client for Windows Phone and Mac, ability to integrate Sharepoint Online with third-party applications (via SharePoint Business Connectivity Services), improved file uploading and sharing tools. Microsoft also made Office 365 available in 22 new countries including Argentina, South Africa and Taiwan. Together with Office 365 its free mass-market alternative SkyDrive has been updated. It also features the new HTML5-uploader an slick file sharing (that we have already mentioned). These new features, and the new file management tools are shown in this video:

When the MS Office Web Apps launched, only  the Excel Web App allowed to collaborate on online documents in real time. Now the trick is also available in the online Word. Though it's not so cool as in Google Docs. To let co-editors see your changes you have to click the Save button, then co-editors will see the notification in the status bar, then click Save and only then see your changes. There is no chat / comments like in Google Docs, but at least you can see who is currently editing every part of the document. Meanwhile co-authoring in the online Word works only in the free Windows Live Office (SkyDrive) and is not yet available in Office 365.