About Box

Box, Inc. (Box) provides a cloud content management platform that enables organizations of all sizes to securely manage cloud content while allowing easy, secure access and sharing of this content from anywhere, on any device. Box is the Content Cloud: a single, secure, cloud-native platform for managing the entire content journey. Content – from blueprints to wireframes, videos to documents, proprietary formats to PDFs – is the source of an organization’s unique value. The Box Content Cloud enables the company’s customers, including 69% of the Fortune 500, to securely manage the entire content lifecycle, from the moment a file is created or ingested to when it’s shared, edited, published, approved, signed, classified, and retained. Box keeps content secure and compliant, while also allowing easy access and sharing of this content from anywhere, on any device – both within the organization and with external partners. With the company’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform, users can collaborate on content both internally and with external parties, automate content-driven business processes, develop custom applications, and implement data protection, security and compliance features to comply with legal and regulatory requirements, internal policies and industry standards and regulations. The Box Content Cloud accelerates business processes, improves employee productivity, enables secure hybrid work, and protects an organization’s most valuable data. The company’s platform enables a broad set of high-value business use cases across enterprises and user experiences. The company’s platform integrates with more than 1,500 leading enterprise business applications, supports hundreds of file formats and media types, and is compatible with multiple application environments, operating systems and devices, ensuring that workers can securely access their critical business content whenever and wherever they need it. The company’s go-to-market strategy is focused on selling its platform as a solution for the entire enterprise with the full set of Box capabilities, leveraging its product suite offerings, and driving high-value significant business outcomes for its customers. This strategy combines top-down, high-touch sales efforts with end-user-driven bottoms-up adoption. The company focuses its efforts on larger enterprises, capitalizing on international growth, and utilizing its partner ecosystem, where most advantageous. The company also fields inbound inquiries and online sales opportunities. The company further expands its market reach by leveraging its network of channel partners that comprises value-added resellers and systems integrators, as well as its own consulting services. The company offers individuals a free version of Box that allows them to experience first-hand its easy-to-use and secure solution. Use of Box often spreads virally within and across organizations, as users adopt Box and invite new users to collaborate. In addition, an organization will frequently purchase Box for one use case and then later expand its deployment to other use cases with larger groups of employees, leading to deeper engagement with the company’s service. The company focuses its sales strategy on ensuring that new and existing customers understand and experience the transformative impact of Box. The company has a technology partner ecosystem, offering more than 1,500 pre-built integrations with partners like Adobe, Apple, Cisco, Cloudfare, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Okta, Palo Alto Networks, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Slack, Macnica Networks, Mitsui Knowledge Industry and Zoom. This gives the company’s users seamless and secure access to their content across all their workflows and applications. In addition, in-house enterprise developers and independent software developers can use the company’s developer platform and open application programming interfaces (APIs) to rapidly build and provision new applications that leverage and extend the core functionality of its services, increasingly with a focus on specific industries and vertical market use cases. As of January 31, 2023, tens of thousands of third-party developers have leveraged the company’s platform as the secure content layer for their applications. Box.org serves over 11,000 nonprofits globally with donated or discounted Box product, employee volunteer hours and grants from the Box Impact Fund. Box.org focuses on areas where Box is uniquely positioned to make an impact, including child welfare, crisis response and the environment. The Box Solution The company offers web, mobile and desktop applications for cloud content management on a platform for developing custom applications, as well as industry-specific capabilities. Box features and functionality include the following: Frictionless Security and Compliance Global Cloud Architecture: The company has built its platform from the ground up on a cloud-based architecture, which enables it to rapidly develop, update and provision its services to users. The company’s proprietary cloud architecture is particularly well-suited for dynamically changing business requirements because it enables use of the most up-to-date versions of its solutions at all times and administrators to immediately apply changes in policies and controls across all their organization’s critical content simultaneously. The company’s modern cloud infrastructure also powers global scalability and reliability with minimal downtime for its customers, ensuring their business-critical content is always secure, compliant, and available. Enterprise-Grade Security: The company has invested heavily to build robust security features to protect its customers from the most pervasive security threats. At the most basic level, all files stored in Box are encrypted at rest and in transit. Box’s information rights management features enable secure access and management of files by providing granular control over users’ ability to access, view, download, edit, print or share content. Box also provides security controls like multi-factor authentication that ensure user identity when allowing access to content, as well as endpoint security tools to restrict access to only properly vetted devices. With Box KeySafe, organizations can implement higher levels of data security and protection by keeping control of the encryption keys that protect their content. This advanced encryption feature is valuable to many organizations, including those in highly regulated industries, such as financial services, health care, government and legal. Intelligent Threat Detection and Smart Access with Box Shield: Box Shield provides granular, near real-time threat detection and protection capabilities. Box Shield also uses advanced machine learning to scan files for sophisticated malware (including ransomware) and identify suspicious user behavior to help organizations detect and prevent threats before they become data breaches. Box Shield reduces the risk of accidental data leakage through native security classifications and granular access controls by automatically applying classification to files that contain content like predefined attributes or personal identifiable information. Comprehensive Data Governance Strategy: Box serves as a secure, centralized system of record for retaining content for operational use while ensuring adherence to applicable laws and regulations. Box Governance allows the company’s users to manage the lifecycle of content and has robust integrations with leading eDiscovery and data privacy vendors. The company’s Box Governance solution allows customers to create and manage retention policies, including both modifiable and non-modifiable policies, depending on an enterprises’ specific business needs. Box Governance also enables legal holds to protect content from being deleted and the automated disposition of data, helping customers to reduce legal risk. Box Zones for In-Region Data Storage: Box Zones enables businesses around the globe to adopt Box as their modern content management platform, while letting them store and manage their content locally in certain regions. This helps organizations address region-specific compliance mandates associated with data residency and privacy. Content Migration: Box Shuttle, the company’s content migration offering, allows organizations of all sizes to easily migrate their data into Box at low cost, regardless of file type or source system. The company’s powerful migration technology allows for in-depth analysis of existing data on third party source systems, native simulation of the migration for testing purposes, and execution of a comprehensive migration that moves files, metadata, and version history. With both self-serve and managed migration options available through Box Consulting, organizations can accelerate their digital transformation by quickly and easily migrating data into the cloud at petabyte scale. Focus on Industry-Specific Capabilities: Box offers capabilities that meet industry-specific needs for those industries that have more complex content and collaboration challenges. These features target specific business problems within those industries with a combination of Box, integration with industry-specific partner technologies, and implementation expertise from Box Consulting and/or implementation partners. For example, Box for GxP Validation provides life sciences organizations with an approach for maintaining GxP compliance in the cloud and enables organizations subject to Food and Drug Administration regulations to manage both unregulated and regulated content within Box. The company successfully serves customers in highly regulated industries with specific requirements relating to compliance with certain security and regulatory standards, such as GxP, FedRAMP, and StateRAMP, and those required by HIPAA, FINRA, and the HITECH Act. Enterprise Administrative Controls: The company gives IT administrators powerful enterprise-grade tools and automations to securely define access rights and permissions by users and groups, content type, devices, and business needs. Administrators can set specific content policies and restrictions, such as access by external groups, expiration dates to auto-delete files or deactivate links to time-sensitive materials. Reporting and Insights for Visibility: All internal and external user activity and content interactions in Box can be tracked and is auditable by the company’s customers’ authorized administrators through the Box Admin Console and via application programming interfaces (APIs). Administrators can gain insights with easy to use dashboards and visualizations for monitoring and reporting. Simple and Rapid Deployment: The company’s cloud-based software allows organizations to deploy its products easily, quickly, and inexpensively. IT administrators can quickly add users and groups, set up permissions, migrate content, create folders and policies, and begin using its products almost immediately without the need to procure and provision hardware or install and configure software. To give its customers the flexibility to choose between à la carte and bundled subscription options, the company offers Box Shield, Box Governance, Box GxP, Box KeySafe, and Box Zones both as standalone add-ons and as part of its bundled Enterprise Plus plan. Seamless Collaboration and Workflow Internal and External Collaboration: Box offers deep integrations with all major productivity and collaboration platforms so that users can work together on any file type, in whatever format they choose, with content security and access permissions handled consistently within Box. By enabling users to share, preview, and annotate files in Box, the company provides a unified collaboration layer so that all feedback is captured and preserved within Box. The company’s Annotations feature enables users to add text-based comments or free-form markups on any file type without altering the underlying content so teams can work together without worrying about version control or data loss. Electronic Signatures: Box Sign, the company’s natively integrated e-signature capability, allows organizations to easily digitize signature workflows, such as signing contracts, employment offers, or statements of work, right where their content lives – with enterprise-grade security, privacy, and compliance built in. Box Sign provides a seamless signer and sender experience across web and mobile devices, with flexible template options, support for more than 20 languages, and additional security features like signer authentication and password protection. The company also offers an open API that allows organizations to power e-signatures in their custom integrations and applications, as well as integrations with tools like Appian, Certa, Crooze CLM, Jotform, Salesforce, UiPath, and VersaFile docuflow, to embed e-signature workflows in common business processes. Real-Time Collaboration and Content Authoring: The company’s native content authoring tool, Box Notes, enables users to seamlessly share and collaborate in real time with internal teams and external partners. Box Notes combines lightweight word processing functionality with easy-to-use tables, content organization, and commenting features to make it simple for users to work together on projects in real time. Whiteboarding and Visual Collaboration: Box Canvas (public beta), the company’s native visual collaboration and white boarding tool, brings working together to life with new ways to connect, innovate, and share securely. Box Canvas offers a flexible, virtual environment where users can ideate, brainstorm and collaborate visually directly in Box, right where their content lives. Content Insights: Content insights shows how each piece of content is being used, who is using it, and when it is being accessed. With easy-to-understand visualizations and the ability to filter and drill down to see performance over time, Content Insights provides users with a clear picture of content performance and gives them the information needed to make data-driven decisions. Mobility: The company’s solution enables users to securely access, manage, share, and collaborate on their content anytime and from anywhere, using nearly any device and a variety of operating systems through both native and web browser applications. The company’s mobile apps allow users to preview, comment, and collaborate on content from anywhere, as well as make it easy to add content to Box with native scanning, uploading, and classification. Elegant, Intuitive and User-Focused Interface: The company is dedicated to keeping its solution easy for users to understand with little to no upfront training. The company strives to enable quick and viral user adoption by maintaining a simple and elegant interface with compelling access, sharing and collaboration features. Built to Handle Content of Nearly Any Type: The company has designed its solution to serve as the central content management layer for an organization’s employees. Users can securely access, share, and collaborate on all types of information, regardless of format or file type, including large media files, from virtually any device or operating system. Automation and Workflow Management: Box Relay, the company’s no-code process automation tool for content-centric workflows, enables users to build process automations in Box in a matter of minutes without writing code. For example, Box Relay provides for more than 75 triggers and outcomes that enable a wide variety of actions, such as routing documents to specific folders, assigning tasks to individuals or teams, and adding metadata. In addition, the company provides a library of more than 20 pre-built workflow templates and reporting capabilities to make it easy for users to track and manage their own workflows. Plus, Box Relay integrates with Box Shield to automatically secure content and with Box Sign to automate e-signature workflows. Integrations and Developer Platform Pre-built Integrations with Best-of-Breed Applications: Box provides a unified and secure content layer across the enterprise technology stack. The company offers more than 1,500 pre-built integrations with seamless interoperability that boosts user productivity and maintains enterprise set security, privacy and compliance policies. In order to make the entire enterprise ecosystem more secure, the company updated its Box Trust Partner Program, with new and deepened integrations, including with Cisco and Splunk, among many others. The company also has a robust set of APIs that provide organizations with the ability to build custom integrations and solution applications on Box. Box Platform: The company provides a content Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) product, known as Box Platform, which allows IT teams and third-party developers to extend the power of Box across their applications and build custom content experiences. With the company’s easy-to-use APIs, businesses can create a single source of truth for their content, allowing IT teams to deploy key business applications while easily managing how content is accessed, collaborated on, and secured. Coupled with the company’s robust developer tools, the Box Platform enables organizations to build applications faster, without having to invest in building their own content management infrastructure. The company also gives organizations the ability to apply machine learning algorithms from leading providers, such as Amazon Web Services, Google, IBM, and Microsoft, as well as specialized industry-specific vendors directly to content within Box using Box Skills. This eliminates the need for customers to create and manage separate document repositories for performing functions, such as image and character recognition, video and audio analysis and transcriptions, and document analysis on business content. Customers As of January 31, 2023, the company had over 100,000 paying organizations, and its solution was offered in 25 languages. The company defines paying organizations as separate and distinct buying entities, such as a company, an educational or government institution, or a distinct business unit of a large corporation, that have entered into a subscription agreement with it to utilize its services. Sales and Marketing The company offers its solution to customers as a subscription-based service, with subscription fees based on customer requirements, including the number of users and functionality deployed. The majority of the company’s customers subscribe to its service through one-year contracts, although the company also offers its services for terms ranging from one month to three years or more. The company employs a direct sales team to offer a higher touch experience. The company’s sales team is composed of inside sales, outbound sales and field sales personnel who are generally organized by account size and geography, and/or major industry focus. The company generates customer leads, accelerate sales opportunities and build brand awareness through its marketing programs and through its strategic relationships. The company’s marketing programs target senior IT leaders, technology professionals and senior line of business leaders. Research and Development The company’s research and development expenses were $243.5 million for the year ended January 31, 2023. Strategy As a core part of the company’s strategy, it has developed an ecosystem of partners to both broaden and complement its application offerings and to provide a broad array of services that fall outside of its areas of focus. These relationships include software and technology partners, as well as consulting and implementation services providers that enable Box to address a broader set of use cases for its customers. Competition The company’s primary competitors in the cloud content management market include, but are not limited to, Microsoft (SharePoint) and OpenText (Documentum). In the enterprise file sync and share market, the company’s primary competitors include, but are not limited to, Microsoft (OneDrive), Google (Drive) and, to a lesser extent, Dropbox. Intellectual Property As of January 31, 2023, the company’s patents were set to expire between 2028 and 2038. History The company was founded in 2005. It was incorporated in the state of Washington in 2005. The company was reincorporated in the state of Delaware in 2008. It was formerly known as Box.Net, Inc. and changed its name to Box, Inc. in 2011.