Data Backup Digest

Box is one of the leading cloud storage companies. The firm caters for both personal and business users. Individuals can sign up and immediately receive 10GB of storage space to keep their data in the cloud. Business users can pay £11 per user/month, with unlimited storage and a minimum of 5 users. Enterprise users pay £25 per user/month, but with the added benefit of everything being much more scalable. Full details about Box’s service and their pricing can be found on their {{https://www.box.com/|official website}}.

Earlier in the year Box announced that they had joined the AppConnect ecosystem. AppConnect is a development from MobileIron, a California-based maker of mobile device management solutions. The AppConnect program itself joins together companies and offer their apps through MobileIron’s MDM platform. The primary goal is that it enables IT teams to ensure data is kept secure on devices, but still maintaining a smooth and native experience for the end user.

Security in IT is obviously a major issue, but the best teams will be able to integrate this into the end-user experience without causing trouble. A large corporation will be full of employees with varying competency levels when it comes to IT.

“Today's CIOs need to build BYOD policies that find the right balance between empowering employees and ensuring the protection of content,” said Justin Somaini, the Chief Trust Officer at Box. “Together, Box and MobileIron offer the security, visibility, and policy management that IT demands, while providing the ease-of-use and productivity that users expect.”

AppConnect works for both IT admins and users and gives both groups the experience they need. According to Sean Convery, the vice president of Product Management for MobileIron, the program provides “the productivity apps that are driving mobile adoption in the first place, with the security our customers need to embrace the change.”

Box isn’t the only service to recently join up with AppConnect. Other new members include Accellion, WatchDox and Acronis. These services offered promotional pricing earlier in the year to push the new partnership.

“Mobile users now expect to access and share everything from email to desktop files on all their devices from behind the firewall. MobileIron's API lets us extend WatchDox's file-level security to protect documents at rest, in transit or in use, in on-premise environments or in the cloud,” said Ryan Kalember, the Chief Product Officer at WatchDox.

MobileIron hopes that AppConnect becomes the go-to infrastructure for businesses. The service not only offers cloud storage apps, but also facilities such as Veracode; a piece of kit that will scan apps to make sure that they’re safe and don’t put data at risk. There is also an Enterprise App Storefront that allows businesses to create a secure net of apps that have been specifically selected.

Box is continuing to target the business and enterprise user. The partnership with MobileIron is one of many moves that the cloud storage company are making to try and stay on top of the competition, like Dropbox or Google Drive. When the money lies in businesses, rather than individual users, it’s clear why.