Data Backup Digest

Box is a cloud storage and management company that supports personal users, businesses and enterprise IT solutions. In the approaching months Box plans to open offices in France and Germany in order to compete with the ever growing marketplace (especially with the addition of larger companies).

Chief executive Aaron W. Levie stated that they planned to hire around 100 more employees in sales, marketing and product development. They currently employ around 700 people in their American offices and last June they hired 40 more to work out of London. It is their aim to build upon the foundations they created when setting up in Britain last year. Apparently Japan, Singapore, Australia and Brazil are all markets that are growing fast when it comes to cloud storage and Box wants to take advantage of it.

Box is originally from California and is one of the smaller cloud companies when compared to competitors like giants Amazon, Microsoft and Google. Box has around 10 data centres all around the world, but their aim is to keep adding to this. Last year they raised $150 million from investors in order to expand internationally.

Box claims to have 150000 business users and 10 million other users. Although profits are not publically disclosed, Levie valued the business at around $1 billion. At the moment no more than 15 percent of their revenue comes from international territory, but they plan to double that figure in the next year or two.

Box helps that their hiring of David Quantrell, a former executive at HP and McAfee, last September will help their business expand in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. They have said that they recently signed their largest contract yet, with Schneider Electric. The French engineering company will be using Box exclusively for their 50000 employees. Some of Box’s other high profile clients are Volkswagen, Spotify and EMI Music.

Market research company IDC have found that American businesses have been quicker to embrace using the cloud. Apparently Europe is worried about data security, regulations and legal jurisdictions. Box will have to help those worries if they wish to meet their expansion figures. However, the market is set to grow. IDC say that the market for cloud services in the European Union is expected to grow from 4.6 billion euros in 2011 to 10.9 billion euros in 2014.

IDC go on to say that around two thirds of European companies are using cloud computing, but mostly to handle things like email traffic. Box hopes to expand cloud usage by trying to convince these companies that they should use the cloud for all aspects of their business, like content management systems.

It is perhaps unlikely that businesses will switch over all their systems to the cloud, but there is definitely a market there for Box to exploit. Cloud storage is a market that is growing steadily outside America and Box hope to try and convince European customers that it is the way to go. By setting up offices overseas they hope to target these businesses directly and try and gain a step up over their competitors.