The Connected Web

Listen to my interview with Jen Grant, VP marketing of online file storage and collaboration vendor Box.net.

In this podcast, hear how a simple Web-based file sharing service has evolved into an Enterprise 2.0 platform, and learn why adding social networking features to business collaboration can boost productivity without adding to overheads.

Listen to or download the 10:13 minute podcast below:

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---Transcript---

PW: Jen, there are a couple of things I really wanted to explore with you today, because I think Box.net is a great example of a company that started with a very simple web-based proposition and it's now gradually adding capabilities that reflect the things people actually want to do with the service. That's a very different approach from the way enterprise software has typically been developed, where it's all a matter of loading up features before you even get started. But I think the organic route is a much better way of developing software, especially when I think people are still working out what the web really enables.

JG: Yep, that's definitely the case with how we were developed. Back in 2005 when we started, it was much more focused just on simple online file storage. And then over time, we've really become quite a solution for businesses, with replacing FTP systems, creating online workspaces, and in many cases now replacing whole file systems. So instead of having to have a file server, you can have everything on Box online. And we're at the point now where we have over 50,000 businesses that are using us for a variety of purposes and we're really continuing to develop along those lines.

Well, yeah, and that's right. It's been an evolution, and its almost accidental that you've effectively become an Enterprise 2.0 platform just by evolving to meet what people were doing with the product — all based around storing files on the web and sharing them in teams.

Exactly.

And what are the main features that businesses are taking advantage of?

Well, some of the main features are, obviously, the ability to put your files online and then manage them with multiple versions, where we save all the versions. But there's also things like discussions, you can add bookmarks — a lot of collaborative features that really bring a team of people into the conversation and the ability to do projects in that one workspace. And the neatest feature that we added recently was a profile, where somebody — if I'm working with, let's say you, on a project and maybe we have a bunch of documents in our workspace that we're working on — I can actually click through and see your profile and see some of the other projects that you're working on, which may help me discover additional information to make all the projects that I'm working on maybe more productive, maybe I can reuse some of the materials that you have and that you're working on.

Yeah, I mean I must say it's very funny the way that we're so reticent about that personal angle in business. Because I signed up for a Twitter account recently, and I realized that I had to put my picture in there, because that was one of the things that would help people to recognize me if they find me and go to my Twitter page. And the idea of associating my photo with my online identity is — I suppose I'm a bit of an old fuddy-duddy — I'm not really that used to it at the moment, but it's starting to become more obvious that you have to do it. So I guess, things like a profile page — in business, a lot of people might say, well, I don't need that at the moment. But they might gradually see that it's a facility they could take advantage of as time goes on.

Yes, and that's definitely what we've seen. And what's interesting, you saying about the profile picture and things like that. When we first — obviously, we used it internally first — and when we rolled it out to everybody in the company, everyone sort of looked at the profile, well, okay I'll put a picture up, and things were fairly business-y. And then everyone sort of realized, well, we're working and we're putting files up, why don't we have a little fun. And so people started — they would change their title to — I changed mine to VP of Cat Herding for a little while and put in a fun picture. And it's silly. It ends being just a little bit of fun in the middle of all the work that we have going on.

Well, and I think that's not such a bad thing because your personality is part of what you bring to work anyway, isn't it?

Yes.

And in fact, it's been a bit false that, in a sense, that's been edited out in the way that we've collaborated in the past in organizations. I mean that's the other thing — on the web, we talk about social computing, whereas the word in enterprise software is collaboration software, which sounds so much more impersonal, doesn't it?

Yes, it definitely does [laughs]. And I think what's nice about the way that we implemented the profile features is that we really, we saw the problem first. We first helped people share large files with their team and do all these different things, and the profile ends up being just maybe the frosting on top of the cake, which is where you get most of your nutrients.

[laughs] Right. And you recently introduced full-text search as well which is — I'm just trying to extend the cake mix analogy but I can't come up with the right imagery. But tell me about the full-text search.

Maybe it's that if you have strawberries in your cake then you can find them easier. No, basically, what we did is just enable full text search across all of the documents you upload to Box. So it's everything from a PDF, a Word, Excel, PowerPoint, even CSV files — anything that has text in it, will get picked up by our engine.

Right. Okay. And is there any kind of relevancy to who's doing the searching? Does it use some of the social computing information as well?

It will. And that's really the future that we think is so exciting about it. So the first iteration of our search is fairly plain vanilla. It does what you expect. It does stemming, which means if I put in the word 'participant', it looks for 'participating', 'participative', all the different ways that the word could be used. And that's the current form that we have it in. But because, instead of using one of the more traditional search vendors, we went with our own solution that — we went out and looked at various open source — and kind of pulled them together into what we consider our search engine.

And then, what that means is that we have a tremendous amount of flexibility with using the information, the metadata, the user data, to affect the relevancy of the search results. So for example, we have a groups feature. So as a systems administrator, I can put all my marketing people in a group, and I can put all my engineering in a group. And if there's a document out there that, let's say, is downloaded quite frequently by the marketing people, and I'm a marketing person who's searching, there's no reason why we shouldn't assume that this document is likely more relevant — versus if an engineer was searching on the same keyword, maybe the document is a little less relevant to him, because in his group it's very rarely downloaded.

Right, right. Yeah, that is interesting. And is that an extra option on the basic account?

It's — so the full text search is available with the business account. So that's one of the features that we're reserving for, really when people are using it in a large team — that's when the business account makes sense, when you need a system administrator and all of the sort of overhead that the team might need, versus an individual who's just sharing with other individuals.

Right, right. Okay. Of course, the business account is the one that people pay for, whereas the individual account is the free-of-charge one, is that right?

Yes, that's right. We actually have a free account, and then we do have a paid account for individuals that just has a lot of additional features, and then we have the business account, of which the main feature is the system administration that you can do.

Right. And the search is included. So — I'm just thinking, there's a lot of functionality there that is just part of the basic package, that you would pay a lot extra for in some of the enterprise platforms. And I just —

I think what's really interesting is that — enterprise search is typically a bolt-on or an add-on to a large enterprise, and they have many different legacy software systems running, and they have to spend a tremendous amount of effort for hardware or software installations to get that up-and-running. And what's nice obviously about Box is that — it's a great example, we have a company called ICD Security and they have something like 300,000 files. They put their entire file system online. And very forward thinking; great, great people. So something like full text search, in a normal circumstance, they would have to pay extra to get it across all these documents and it would be sort of an implementation and they would have to go through a lot of work.

But in our case, we just turned it on for them. So they already have a business account and now they can search over all of those documents.

That's great isn't it, doing — the way the web works with this application functionality. And do people use Box.net with in-house collaboration platforms or is it more that you see people using it with things like Google Apps and Salesforce and so on?

We definitely see a lot of correlation between other web-based apps and Box. So we have integration with Salesforce.com. We have one customer, who I believe they're called NetGenerations, that uses a very sophisticated setup with, not only the sales folks, when they're looking at opportunities can also see their library of collateral. And they're starting to build in — and we're starting to build out this integration such as that you can do even more than that — more than just see and send your collateral, but potentially comment and mark down which pieces of collateral that particular opportunity has already seen so that you can better understand, okay, what information have I given them and what information should I give them.