Cloud storage provider Box.net is moving to expand its reach beyond simple file sharing with a series of investments, partnerships and software extensions called the Box Innovation Network. They plan on investing two million dollars over the next two years to encourage a variety of add-on development around their core technology, as well as encourage more main-line enterprise software developers to use their resources and cloud services.
Box was one of the first storage providers to publish and promote their API, and it shows. They get 200 million calls to their APIs each month, which is a four-fold increase from about this time last year. These calls come from more than 120 different add-on apps that connect to their service, such as eFax and Google Docs. They already employ more than a 100 different file type converters so you can view the documents natively in your browser. And while their developer program has more than 4500 members, but they want more action.
Partners that are already extending the Box framework include Cloud Foundry, Heroku, Rackspace, SnapLogic and Twillio. There are various discounts and incentives to make use of BIN. While there is no fee to join, there is a process to evaluate your application and verify you as a member.
One of the first members of BIN, and an example of where Box wants to take its BIN idea, is LiveOffice, which today announced its File Archive a cloud-based service to archive documents from both Box and Dropbox. The new service captures, stores and indexes all files uploaded to each service, allowing businesses to meet compliance, e-discovery and retention requirements. File Archive uses each service’s API to securely capture, store and index the files uploaded to the service. LiveOffice stores the associated metadata from the content, such as user name, modified date/time, file size and version to provide additional context in searches.
