BUSINESSTECH TECH BUSINESS
Dropbox for Business Beefs Up Storage and Administrative Control
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ropbox will continue beefing up the business version of its cloud storage and file sharing service, adding security features to shared links, full-text search capabilities and new tools for enterprise developers. Dropbox, which has about 300 million end users, is immensely popular among consumers, but is now trying to elbow its way into the fiercely competitive enterprise market for cloud storage, file sync and sharing services. “We’re taking the simplicity and ease of use of our core product and marrying it with IT admin controls in Dropbox for Business,” said Ilya Fushman, Head of Product for Dropbox for Business. For Dropbox content shared via links, it will now be possible for users to require a password for access to the content and set an expiration date for the link. This feature can now be turned on by Dropbox admins for their end users. In the coming months, Dropbox for Business will also gain a fulltext search engine, an upgrade over the current search feature that is limited to querying file names.
BusinessFocus Sept / Oct
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Dropbox is also extending its improved Microsoft Office document preview capabilities to its Android application, so that users can check out a file without necessarily downloading it. For developers, Dropbox is releasing two new APIs (application programming interfaces). The Shared Folder API makes the core functions of shared folders available to third-party apps and tools. Meanwhile, the Document Preview API lets developers embed this feature into their applications. About 80,000 businesses pay for Dropbox for Business, which costs $15 per user/ month, for a minimum of 5 users, and features unlimited storage capacity. It came out of its beta testing period in April. The company declined to say how many people use Dropbox for Business. Other Dropbox for Business IT administration controls include the ability to remotely wipe Dropbox files from employee devices, to track how and with whom users share files via audit logs, and to transfer control of employee accounts.
Dropbox’s main competitors are Microsoft and Google, which offer their respective cloud storage and file share services— along with suites of productivity and collaboration apps—to both consumers and businesses, and Box, which focuses on the workplace market. All three are locked in a manic race to lower prices and increase storage capacity. Microsoft recently announced its plan to more than double to 15GB the storage capacity in the free, stand-alone OneDrive service for consumers, while also slashing the cost of additional storage. Meanwhile, with a free Google account, people get 15GB of storage for files in Drive, Gmail messages and Google+ photos, and can purchase 100GB of additional storage for $1.99 per month. Other Dropbox rivals in the enterprise space include IBM, YouSendIt, Citrix, Accellion, Egnyte and WatchDox. ¤ Source: PCWorld