Box.net, the online file storage and sharing service, has just launched integration with Salesforce.com. Starting today businesses will be able to add a Box.net app to their Salesforce accounts, allowing them to quickly access their documents, media, and other files from directly within their CRM. The app also includes support for Box.net’s OpenBox platform, giving you access to the services that have been integrated with the service (these include services like Zoho and eFax).
To get started, businesses need to sign up for Box.net’s enterprise plan, which includes free access to the Salesforce app. As an added bonus, any businesses using the new Salesforce integration will be eligible for unlimited storage on Box.net — something that the service’s normal enterprise customers don’t have. Box.net will also offer access to the Salesforce app to customers using the ‘Business’ level account (which is for smaller companies), though it won’t come with unlimited storage.
CEO Aaron Levie says that this is the first step in Box.net’s plan to give businesses a secure way to share their files across multiple services on the web. He says that many of the cloud services geared toward the enterprise don’t work well together — oftentimes you’ll have to reupload the same content to multiple sites to share or edit it. Box.net wants to help unify these services by serving as the central hub for your uploaded files, which you can then access from these other web-based services. Levie hints that we’ll be seeing more integrations with other services in the near future.
For more details, check out the demo video below:
Demo video done by Transvideo Studios.
Great work, Box!
Box.net is ranked 5th for the best file sharing services according to Twitter users: http://bit.ly/3zBvKe
Good job Box! Their product just keeps getting better and better.
Great Job BOX !
I have an SF.com enterprise account and I have a Box account – yet for the life of me I can’t understand why I would possibly want to use this.
If there is an enormous file that I need to share, I’d just ftp it. If we need to collaborate with remote employees on the same docs and share them securely, we use Google Docs.
Salesforce.com as an app is pretty sluggish, performance-wise. The application hangs up a lot, and one of its strengths is not quick navigation. I can’t imagine having it be my go to place for important files. Whether those files get to Sf.com via Box is a non-starter.
This sounds like a barney announcement. Sf.com being opportunistic and partnering with a hot company, in the hopes that it leads to more upgrades to enterprise edition. As someone on enterprise edition already and a Box user, I don’t see any practical reason to be interested in this capability.
After watching the product demo, I can see the usefulness of the salesperson just having the ready access to the inventory of docs / collateral to send from w/ in Sf.com. But I’m sure as hell not going to start saving all my business documents in Box.net, when Google Docs offers so much more utility in terms of collaboration / version control / email transmission / you name it.
My experience w/ Sf.com has been that the email client part isn’t a lot of fun. Very little has changed with the look and feel / performance of the email client in the last two years (which is pretty weak considering Sf.com’s vast revenues / predatory pricing / virtually unlimited development resources). I would already far prefer sending emails from Outlook (and using the sf.com connector) than sending from w/ in Sf.com. The Sf.com email has a fixed window size. Once you’ve opened an email window and started drafting something, you can’t do a search for a contact or do anything else (you’re basically tied to either finishing / sending that email, or shutting out of it and going off to do something else). The email functionality of sf.com is in the dark ages … missing simple user conveniences that even a rough once-over by a qa person would detect.
I think if Sf.com’s vision is to make their email sending stickier / more convenient – an equal amount of time should be spend on improving the actual email interface as with providing connectors to relatively superfluous services.
I use Gmail and Google docs every day (and most business users that I know do as well). I’ve seen grumblings from users asking for integration with those for at least a couple of years now. Wonder when that’s coming? Or maybe they’re just passively waiting for someone from the apex community to build it?
You do know that you can integrate Google Apps and SFDC, right?
Wow, TC. This is such old news it’s absurd. I’ve been using the Box.net integration for Salesforce (though even that definition is in flux) for a couple weeks now.
It’s bizarre, this is one topic I know a lot about, and it’s obvious it’s complete fluff and nothing new. Yet TC touts is as news… does this laziness and hype permeate across all your news stories?
It’s news to me, and several other commenters. I guess it sucks when TC doesn’t customize their news specifically for you though, right?
Congratulations Box.net and Salesforce.com – Finally a document management add on that goes beyond attaching a document to a CRM activity .
Box.net would not only provide true collaboration and document sharing capabilities to Salesforce.com but also empower its users with its Open Box platforms opening the doors to tons of savings when it comes to what else to do with a document that needs to get into the hands of your potential deal such as digital signature, security tracking and many other features.
This partnership seals one more milestone for CRM to truly follow up and close a deal.
It’s actually pretty clever. Content/document management is a big deal for sales teams (all sales teams need to manage their collateral). Salesforce offers its own Content module, but using Box.net enables collaborate and usage with folks who aren’t on Salesforce or using SFDC Content module.
why do all these online programs market to 10+ users. This new box.net integration with sf is no good to me as we only have a 2 user account. Thanks for nothing box.net