Big news today that will potentially have a negative impact on Box.com as arch-rival Dropbox signs a high level strategic partnership with
Dropbox has long been the poster child (and not in a good way) for “Shadow IT” – the move within large organizations for individual business users to select and deploy their own services. Indeed many of the security companies that promise to give enterprise IT more control over cloud sell their services based partially on the premise that they help enterprise IT cut out Dropbox use.
Meanwhile, Dropbox has been trying hard to become a “real’ enterprise vendor. At times this aim has been hindered by Dropbox’s perennial attention to more consumer-focused offerings – I recall a couple of times when Dropbox had enterprise-focused announcements that were overshadowed by consumer news. There is an apparent tension within Dropbox headquarters that sees the consumer side of the house (where, arguably, CEO Drew Houston’s loyalties lie) and the enterprise side.
Given the difficulties that Dropbox has had being a “real” business vendor, and seeing the apparent success that its arch-rival, Box, has had in doing the same, it is interesting to look at a strategic announcement that Dropbox and Microsoft are making today. The companies are announcing a deep integration between Microsoft Office and Dropbox. The integration sees the companies take Dropbox-based collaboration on Microsoft Office documents across mobile and web applications..
Initially the integration will roll out on mobile devices, with web access to come. In terms of what this integration actually offers, Dropbox and Microsoft users will be able to:
- Access Dropbox from Office apps to get to their files and folders faster.
- Edit Office files directly from Dropbox and sync them across devices.
- Share new or edited files from the Office apps using simple Dropbox sharing functionality.
The next updates for Microsoft’s Office apps on iOS and Android will include this functionality with web integrations promised for the first half of 2015. For its part, Dropbox will make the applications available on the Windows Phone and Windows tablet platforms. In terms of accessing the joint products, these capabilities will be available to all Office users with a Dropbox account. Dropbox for Business customers will need an Office 365 subscription
I’ve long said that standalone synchronization and sharing applications are sub-optimal when compared to those that are deeply tied in to office productivity suites – it is for this reason that I’ve been bullish about
Of course the obvious questions are what this means for OneDrive, Microsoft’s-own sharing and sync solution, and Box. Box itself announced a similar partnership with Microsoft a few months ago. As for OneDrive, it seems that Microsoft is running a dual strategy here – encouraging customers to use the native OneDrive offering but also embracing third prty vendors.
This is a validation for Dropbox, and nicely times given its expected upcoming IPO. Whether the company can continue to move into being a true enterprise vendor remains to be seen. But in isolation this is a positive sign.
