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:

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The deal was briefly announced today on the Increo blog and then deleted. But a Box.net page talking about the acquisition remains live. The acquisition was closed in August.

I spoke to Box.net CEO Aaron Levie briefly about the acquisition. He says the key reason they acquired Increo is to integrate the collaboration and annotation functionality from Backboard. Increo’s underlying technology for displaying documents on websites is also attractive to Box.net.

The size of the transaction is not being disclosed, although Levie says it is a mix of cash and stock. Increo Solutions has raised just $500,000 in venture capital. Box.net has raised $12.5 million.

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There’s now a lot of buzz debating the business model of “Free” with the release of Chris Anderson’s new book. Most of the conversation has focused on free media and free consumer services, but ultimately the effects and expectations of free in our consumer lives will begin to emerge within our business lives. Today, there’s no shortage of examples of free or “freemium” business software, from commercial services (37Signals, PBworks, Google Apps) to open source (Mysql, SugarCRM), yet, there’s still a great divide of SaaS solutions selling their software with an “older” format (Salesforce.com) and even some with a really old model (SharePoint). Simply judging by the relative market caps of companies pursuing each model, no one in SaaS has built up a substantial enterprise business yet with the model of free or freemium alone. Mysql only got to $50M in revenue before it was acquired, and the majority of freemium enterprise service providers are still in the tens-of-millions range, with few exceptions.

Mark Cuban brings an interesting point to the debate: when you live by your free service, you die by your free service. There’s certainly merit in this argument if your business model is an advertising model based on pageview volume alone or if you’re holding up solely because of venture capital. When your uniqueness and flavor dries up, so may your users, and thus your revenue and funding. This was generally Mark’s concern when we introduced the free version early in 2006 (he was an early investor in Box, with no current stake): Why would people ever pay? How do you avoid just eating up a ton of costs with no revenue to supplement? What about when someone else comes out with a version of your service that’s also free with more bells and whistles? How will you remain competitive?

To put one main argument to rest, we’ve learned that there is no business model in Free alone (duh), while there may just be a large business model in Freemium in time. There are a few reasons why the freemium model has enabled new software products to grab significant market share while also build a strong enterprise business in the face of dozens of startup competitors and giants like (both free and pay). This model allows you to surface your service to a much wider customer base (cross vertical, geography, function) and learn from and efficiently attract all types of users onto the service. And – more significantly – maintaining a free version of your service for a single user or small group is a very efficient way to get users to eventually actually pay for your product: customers can quickly try out your service without a lengthy sales pitch and users with limited requirements can get by for free, but recommend the business version to their company when the time is right.

Take a look at Google Apps for a great example of this model done right. You can use as much Gmail and Calendar as you want as a single user or small group, but if you want the real business version on your domain, it’s time to pay up (see their 15,000 seat Genentech deal). Instead of spending large amounts of money on marketing that tells people about a product, create a community of free users and create evangelists in the process. It also helps avoid the risk of competitors coming in and undercutting your costs – fun fact: when in a sales “bake off,” Box.net loses the largest amount of deals to ourselves, not to another service.

Let me emphasize that in case you missed it: Not everyone will find the same value in your product or service. For those that don’t, why not keep them as users and turn them into evangelists?

Freemium allows the actual consumer of the technology to make decisions in an unprecedented way: if the product doesn’t solve their problem, they move on to something else. This forces you to create better, more usable products, and not simply build your business on aggressive and costly marketing and sales. Instead of focusing primarily on the purchasing party (often an IT or department manager), the model is inverted, with more power being put in the hands of the end-user of the technology. Onerous contracts and deep sales relationships don’t keep them there. This means your product has to rock, and it has to constantly be asking and answering the same fundamental question: are we providing the best valuable possible? If you’re not, Free users will leave and the rest certainly will never pay.

Freemium is also great strategy for products that have high switching costs – why not allow me to start using a free version, get hooked, and begin charging me when I hit a threshold of activity? Every day, in our own business, we have to make budget decisions on new software which can ultimately hold up the purchase by months; whereas if we were able to start using the product immediately we’d quickly hit a usage threshold, and we’d be more convinced about the solution at the point of purchase (no more buyers remorse). Instead, we end up doing a price bake off between multiple solutions, and whoever has the better sales rep and “story” essentially wins. What if Salesforce.com gave you the first 100 contacts for free, then you start paying once you need more? Once my first 100 leads are added into SalesForce, I’m not going anywhere else. If your service offers true ROI once implemented, why not let me implement it for free and charge me once I achieve some success? These strategies will reduce the sales friction of any service, allow businesses to be more competitive, and expand the potential market dramatically.

The great news is that because software distribution and sales models are adapting with the times, the number of people that can now access and afford your product has gone up exponentially in the past decade. Given the fact that we can now develop and deliver software much more easily and cheaply (distribution over the web vs. hardware and software sales), and thus reflect these cost improvements onto customers, we can now go after much larger or harder to reach markets more efficiently (small businesses, for instance). With the right product, reaching 10 million potential business users and customers is now trivial. Imagine doing that 10 or 20 years ago. And with an addressable market in the millions of users, it becomes a lot more practical than ever before to make a meaningful business just selling to a subset of that base.

So what to take from all this? Here are some quick lessons we’ve learned from “Free” in the enterprise:

• Free is not a business model, it’s a marketing and distribution tactic. Don’t forget this, and don’t get distracted into thinking otherwise.
• Free is not an excuse to make a lesser product, in fact it forces you to make a better product or no one will ever pay.
• Free will expand your market size and scope instantly; make sure you’re prepared, and make sure you can survive and thrive if only a subset ultimately pay you.
• Freemium works when you know who will want to pay for the service and what extra bells they will pay for. This can be based on usage thresholds, ROI achieved, more features, better support, etc.
• Freemium also works because larger businesses have specialized requirements that they’ll pay for: more security, more users, better management, etc.
• Treat free as an advantage – learn from all those new potential customers of your product, pay attention and allow niches to emerge that you can sell to.
• Lose customers to yourself, not your competitors

This discussion certainly isn’t over. We’re going through a major sea change. It happened to music, it happened to consumer services, it’s happening to newspapers and publishing, and it will happen to business software. The business models are changing. It means software businesses will need to be innovative and adaptable, but ultimately you’ll survive if people want what you have to offer, regardless of the price tag. Of course there will always be room for premium software to be pay-only, just like we still expect to pay a premium for a variety of content in the “real” world (movies, research reports, education, etc); but, for mass penetration the reality is Free and Freemium will you get there quicker, faster, and with less friction along the way. If that’s what you’re looking for, then it’s just up to you to figure out the actual business model if you want it to last.

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Online file storage startup Box.net has unveiled a redesigned interface, introducing a number of new collaborative features in an effort to appeal to its new target audience: businesses and the enterprise. The site will continue to offer the same storage solution it has for years, but is looking to capitalize on businesses – the kind that are actually willing to pay – that have grown to become the site’s most frequent users.

Box.net launched back in 2005 as a fairly basic online storage site, and has continued to add functionality since then, introducing new features like a two-way storage widget, a platform that integrated a number of popular web applications, and a Facebook application that CEO Aaron Levie refers to as an “interesting effort”.

Over time, Levie says that the company found that its most avid users were businesses – a fact that became increasingly apparent when Box.net introduced collaborative and enterprise features that allowed teams of coworkers to quickly share files with each other. In light of this trend (and the fact that these companies actually pay for the service), Box.net is working to make itself better optimized for a group work environment.

First and foremost, users will notice a revamped interface. Each directory now includes a sidebar indicating which files have been recently modified, along with a listing of other members who have been working on the files. The site also now gives every user their own profile page, which presents standard contact information, a news feed of recent activity, and a list of common collaborators. Other new features include the ability to add discussions and bookmarks to folders, offering a level of communication beyond just file sharing.

The upgrades introduced today certainly emphasize the site’s shifting focus to collaboration, but I feel as if the new social aspect is missing a few key features (for one, I’d like to be able to send a direct message to one of my collaborators without having to include it as part of a general discussion). But Box.net is walking a fine line between maintaining the simplicity its users have embraced and building a full-blown file sharing social network (which it probably doesn’t want to become), so any further changes will likely be gradual. Still, don’t be surprised if we see some more collaborative features added in the near future.

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Online file storage and sharing service Box.net is helping to put the “cloud” in Dell’s first netbook, the Inspiron Mini 9.

With only 4GB of built-in hard drive space, Dell needed some way to boost capacity. So it placed a default Box icon on the desktop that leads to 2GB of free internet storage (twice the normal 1GB that Box provides for free).

Right now, that icon is just a shortcut to Box’s website where users can sign up for the service. The Palo Alto-based startup has suggested, however, that a deeper level of desktop integration is in the works.

Don’t want to cough up $350 for one of these little guys? Box has offered to give away five of them for free to our readers. Each will come with 25GB of Box storage.

To win one, tell us in the comments why you need an ultraportable laptop. We’ll pick the five best reasons and email to follow up, so make sure to submit your real email address.

Update: The contest has ended – thanks everyone for your submissions!

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The idea that Google could swoop in and dominate the online storage market certainly doesn’t help the founders of several startups sleep better at night. But they aren’t without their arguments for why a Google solution would be bad for consumers.

Box.net has come up with the following clever response to the idea that Google should control all of our information, including our files (click for a bigger view).

As the company describes it:

The goal of the game is to use Google shares to buy as many properties as you can without landing in the deadpool and losing your stock. As with any great board game, there’s a very real metaphor to what’s going on…. What happens when the Google monster gobbles up all that is left in the web world, is present on your cell phone, desktop, and even controls your health information? For all their product excellence, the threat of amassing this much data is too serious to ignore.

So the real question is, does placing Box.net on the board (between none other than LinkedIn and Facebook) mean the company sees itself as Google acquisition bait? And how do fellow startups Loopt and Scribd feel about being placed on Mediterranean and Baltic?

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Online storage provider Box.net has raised $6M in a Series B round of financing led by U.S. Venture Partners and involving Draper Fisher Jurvetson.

According to the release, Box.net currently has over 1.4 million registered users and will use the funding “to continue company expansion, including the development and marketing of new services and products.”

We recently covered the launch of OpenBox, a way for third-party web service developers to build functionality into Box.net. The company raised its $1.5M in Series A funding from Draper Fisher Jurvetson mid-2006 when it had only 500,000 members.

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It is similar to box.net and a number of other startups. Users can upload files via a Flash tool or by simply emailing files to a designated address. Files an also be uploaded via a widget (see example here in the right sidebar). The page itself (example) can be open or password protected. The pages can be anonymous, and each one, called a “drop,” has 100 MB of free storage (you can upgrade to 1 GB for $10/year). There are also RSS feeds and email alerts for drops, although they do not contain enclosures. You have to link through to get to the actual file.

All in all, it’s a fairly generic service with a better-than-average but hardly revolutionary interface.

Today, though, they added a very nice niche feature called, simply, Voice. Every drop page has a phone number and extension associated with it. Call the number, dial the extension and record an unlimited length voice message (subject only to the overall 100 MB file size limitation). The file will appear momentarily as a MP3 file on the drop page.

This is an easy way to record a voice note, or even a simple podcast message. For now you can only have one person on the line, so conference calls aren’t a built in feature. Of course, you can always simply three-way dial the drop.io number as well as another person and record a call, or add drop.io to Skype to record a conference call there.

This reminds me of Dave Winer’s TwitterGram project that he created with BlogTalkRadio last year. There are also basic web-based recording functions that turn your voice into a MP3 (see Daft Doggy), although those do not tie into an actual phone number.

I like the service because it’s very, very easy to use and has no real restrictions. It would be perfect if they simply added the file as an enclosure to an email or RSS feed as well, but for now that isn’t an option.

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Online storage provider Box.net is announcing today the launch of OpenBox, a platform for developers to integrate their web applications into Box.net.

The platform, once rolled out in full by December 5th, will enable web developers to create “service actions” on Box.net that allow users to easily load their files into 3rd-party web applications. These service actions will also permit users to transfer their files back to Box.net once they have been edited elsewhere. OpenBox is therefore meant to help transform Box.net into an online file system where users can store the data they want to load into various applications on the web.

Today’s announcement largely signals the availability of service actions for a handful of web applications: Echosign, eFax, Autodesk, Zoho, ThinkFree, Scribd, Picnik, Zazzle, Mimeo, Twitter, and Myxer. These service actions are options in a dropdown menu that appears when you right-click on file hosted by Box.net. Select “Edit document” to load a file into Zoho, “Publish with Scribd” to send a document to Scribd’s repository, “Edit with Picnik” to edit an image in a graphics program, and so on. Although Box.net has put some hands on time into setting up this original batch of web services, developers will be able to set up their service actions on their own using a point-and-click interface available on December 5th.

Box.net has focused on making OpenBox compatible with existing APIs so that developers won’t need to reconfigure their applications to mesh with it. Just tell OpenBox what type of HTTP request to make (REST, UPLOAD POST, XML, or SOAP) and what parameters to use, and Box.net will connect to your application through your API. If you don’t have an API, however, you need to create some sort of interface for your application to communicate with Box.net.

As with the Facebook platform, services (or “applications” if you prefer) on Box.net will be provided to users in a directory. When services are submitted to OpenBox, they will be manually approved before they hit the directory. Each service will also get its own distinct URL.

OpenBox is not the first initiative that Box.net has taken to open its file storage up to other applications on the web. The company already provides APIs through which other applications can automatically perform functions on your Box.net files (once authorized, of course). Not many service providers have taken advantage of this functionality, however, since users could not propagate their files to other services from within Box.net until now. By providing third parties with a presence within Box.net’s actual website, OpenBox will probably attract many more companies who want to feed off the service’s user base.

More screenshots of OpenBox are provided below.

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Today they launched a new widget product. It’s effectively a public folder that can be customized and embedded in a web page. A logo can be added and a number of views are available. The folder can be password protected, and viewers can also optionally upload their own files as well (if the creator is a premium or pro account holder). Media files are automatically played when clicked, or they can be right-clicked and downloaded.

I’ve embedded an example folder below, although I’ve turned off file uploading. The files are examples only.

There are a number of potential uses for this, particularly for groups collaborating on documents or files. It’s also useful as a drop box for clients who need to transfer files, etc. Note that Box.net also has more customized versions of these widgets. See, for example, the widget about half way down this MySpace page.

Box.net offers a free account with 1 GB of storage and 10 GB of monthly bandwith. Premium accounts, which have no bandwidth restrictions, cost $8 per month and have 5GB of storage. A premium account, at $20/month, has 15GB of storage.

Disclosure: I am an investor and on the board of directors of a box.net competitor, Omnidrive.

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Box.net previously received angel funding from a variety of people, including most notably Mark Cuban. (Update: Box.net bought out Cuban’s share of the company when they received this round of funding.) The company seeks to differentiate itself from the long list of other online storage services by positioning itself for collaboration. Multiple subusers can access a shared collaboration area, something that’s particularly appealing to SMB customers. The number of SMB customers relative to total paid customers appears to be about 25 to 30%.

Five hundred thousand registered users is a good number for a start up company that’s only seven months old. Box.net wouldn’t publicy state how many of those users are active and paid, which I find very frustrating. StreamLoad, an older company in the same space, says it has 4 million total users and will disclose that 25,000 of them have paid accounts. (In fact, that’s a number from several months ago and now that the company has entered into a number of big partnerships they no longer disclose paid user numbers.) Box.net has a much lower number of total accounts, but a significantly higher percentage of its accounts are paid. Streamload provides 25 GB of storage to free account holders, Box.net free accounts provide 1 GB of storage.

While Streamload has landed a number of B2B partnerships lately, Box.net highlights third party uses of its API to allow file access from inside sites like Netvibes. The company has provided group access to stored media files for events like BlogHer and Billboard’s “Mecca” event. Steve Rubel wrote last night about how challenged Tour De France winner Floyd Landis is also taking his legal and PR defense public by sharing legal documents in a publicly available box.net archive.

Box.net is a simple enough service to use that has a clear strategy (partnerships and collaboration), VC backing and a reasonable if ambiguous conversion rate from free to paid accounts. They probably stand a decent chance in the upcoming online storage wars.

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The online storage market is evolving fast. In the past, users could expect no more than a simple service where files could be slowly uploaded and downloaded from a mapped virtual drive or a simple web based interface. Little competition (and the bursting of the bubble) led to very high prices for a minimal amount of storage.

Over the last year a slew of new services have launched (some are launching in February) with serious web 2.0 features, reasonable pricing (including free unlimited storage) and, in at least one case (OmniDrive), the ability to read/write directly to the file with local applications like Office, on the remote server. This last feature speeds the process of writing to files significantly by skipping the requirement to download the file to the hard drive first.

The Online Storage Gang
We looked at a total of thirteen companies. They are: AllMyData, Box.net, eSnips, Freepository, (the unfortunately named) GoDaddy, iStorage, Mofile, Mozy, Omnidrive, Openomy, Streamload, Strongspace and Xdrive.

Another service, Zingee, has yet to launch and may also (or may not) have a compelling offering.

Of the thirteen companies that we researched for this post, three really stand out. Australia-based OmniDrive (unfunded but not for long) is the clear leader in features. Box.net and Streamload are also very good choices.

The services can roughly be broken down into storage-centric and sharing-centric. Some services, like Mozy and the unfortunately named Godaddy, are centered on storage only. GoDaddy offers online file backup with very basic uploading and downloading features – effectively a remote network drive. They are a bare-bones service with a fairly attractive price point ($20/year for 2 GB). You will not find sharing or other advanced features here.

Other services offer storage but really focus on sharing files. There are a number of options here, but the best (OmniDrive, Box.net and Streamload) offer full private and public sharing. In addition, I really like the way Box.net approaches group folders, where any number of people can have read/write priviliges. Omnidrive is close to launching this feature as well.

Web 2.0 Features
Most of the new players (possibly with the exception of Mozy) are laser focused on key web 2.0 features. The best have multiple folders (private, shared, group, public), RSS feeds for each folder, etc. A couple, including Omnidrive, have also built features that allow subscriptions for RSS enclosures (such as podcasts), so that those files are stored in the cloud instead of your hard drive.

And OmniDrive has one key feature that no one else matches: full read/write functionality on the file, in the cloud. Open a file from your Omnidrive, edit it and write it back to Omnidrive without ever downloading a local copy. Once they release their API, I imagine many, many services will mash the Omnidrive storage service into their applications. It is just too compelling not to.

AllMyData, unique among the group, is a full peer-to-peer solution with “grid storage”. This means you give up storage on your hard drive for other users, and you get theirs in return. Putting aside the fact that giving up storage is exactly what users don’t want when looking for a solution, the fact that others’ computers must be powerd up and online for you to be able to access your files is a serious service limitation.

Pricing
Pricing is all over the place, although I expect it to settle down as competition drives some of these companies out of the market.

Streamload is the most aggresive on pricing – offering a full 25 GB free to every user.

The obvious way to market these products, in my opinion, is to boldly offer unlimited storage for a nominal sum. Costs can be covered via a one-time sign up fee and through charges on download bandwidth (once I need the files, I’m willing to pay to get them).

I firmly believe that online storage should, and will, be packaged with new computers and applications like Windows. The amount of unprotected but hugely important media content out there on hard drives (music, movies, home movies, pictures), is growing every day. People need somewhere to back this data up for a reasonable fee, and it seems to me that Dell and others should package this service with the PC. All initial software would be auto stored, and users would have the option to continuously syncronize their hard drive with the virtual drive.

And while this business has thin margins, this is a multi-billion dollar per year revenue opportunity.

The Chart
The information above simply highlights the much more detailed information in the table linked to the left.

We were not able to speak to every company directly and the information available on websites is usually incomplete or hard to find. Therefore, we’ll be updating this table as more and better data comes in. Also, I’m sure I’ve left out any number of competitors in this space, so I will be updating the list of companies as well.

For the full feature comparison table, see here.

Research by Adam Bouskila
Research for this post was conducted by Adam Bouskila, a 17 year old genius who lives in Vancouver, Canada. I cannot thank Adam enough for his hard work, and I hope to work with him again on future posts.

Update: It’s clear to me from comments and emails that this space is exploding, and that I missed a lot of companies and features. I also hadn’t realized Fred Wilson posted on this subject last December, but he has an excellent post here.

The invite-only event was created by Noah Kagan, Shivani Sopory, and Nancy Gong.

Below are my notes on each of the nine startups that presented. See Robert Scoble and Emily Chang for additional commentary, and Max Kiesler has a podcast recording of the entire event here.

BillMonk

I wrote about BillMonk last week. The company, founded by Gaurav Oberoi and Chuck Groom, have created an excellent tool for managing social debts and IOUs. It’s easy to see this catching on. IOweYou is a competitor.

411 Metro

411Metro, is an advertiser-supported free 411 service. Derek Merrill presented the company. His co-founders are Alec Andronikov and Alexey Bulavin. 411Metro joins Free411 and 411 Save in this space, with a nearly identical business model of playing a short advertisment from a competitor to the requested business. The company is seed funded from Hummer Winblad and launched in November 2005

Standpoint

Standpoint, which launched today, is a “wikipedia of opinions”. At its core it is a simple blog for users to post their opinions and links to websites that help them form or support those opinions. Topics are grouped and the aggregate opinion of the community on any topic can be gauged. Co-founder Justin Smith presented. Gentry Underwood is Standpoint’s other founder.

LicketyShip

Robert Pazornik’s LicketyShip has the potential to be a big winner. It is an ecommerce service that can deliver purchased goods within two hours of placing the order. The magic? They combing local retail shops with the apparent over-capacity in the local courier market. Couriers pick items up at retail shops and deliver them immediately.

Lickety Ship hopes to tap into the must-have-now crowd (Robert claims theat 30% of Amazon orders pay for overnight shipping, often paying more for shipping than for the item itself). The company is beta testing now in a few select cities.

This reminds me of the good old days when we had kozmo to deliver a packet of skittles. The difference here is that customers will pay for this added convenience.

Flagr

Flagr was founded by Matt Colyer, David Wurtz adn Cole Poelker – all college dropouts from Boston. They are collecting emails on their site for a private beta…but the company promises to allow people to send tips on real world stuff in via a text message on a cell phone. Type in the title, address and comments, send it to Flagr and broadcast it to your friends or everyone. Their tagline is “sharewhere”.

PlaceSite

PlaceSite is another of my favorites from the event. They add their software to a standard wifi router and distribute them to cafe’s, events, etc. The result is a portal that all users of the network see that shows them current users of the network, allows instant messaging, etc. Their idea is to build more online community in these real world settings.

Placesite is up and running at one location now – Cafe Couleur in San Francisco (16th and De Haro). The revenue model is super-local advertising, customized versions for venues (this is great for conferences), and permission based licensing of user data.

I like it, and I want it on my home wifi.

Given the focus on instant messaging, PlaceSite seems to be trying to address the same market at Meetro – giving people who are local to eachother a way to meet online.

Box.Net

Box.Net is an online storage provider that launched in early 2005. They boast 4,300 paying users and funding by Mark Cuban. The founders, aaron Levie and Dylan Smith, were demonstrating the new functionality that they’ll be releasing in a couple of weeks. I’ll be writing more about Box.net and other companies in this space next week. This is a quickly evolving space.

Skobee

Noam Lovinsky is the founder of Skobee, a new service to help people plan events. They seem to be a direct competitor to Renkoo. The site is currently collecting emails for the beta.

Both Skobee and Renkoo are focused on event planning (as opposed to an evite which looks at organizing people once the event specifics have been finalized). One thing I really like about Skobee is that users just email back and forth, cc’ing a unique skobee email address. Based on the live demo the service seems to be quite good at turning natural language into structured text. For instance, saying “Let’s do this on Monday instead” is understood by Skobee as a request for a date change and noted.

NeuroSky

Johnny Liu’s NeuroSky claims to have created “the world’s first consumer-minded nural device”.

A longer description from their website is “Neurosky has developed a non-invasive neural sensor and signal processing technology that converts brainwaves and eye movements into useful electronic signals to communicate with a wide range of electronic devices, consoles, and computers”. Applications include controlling video games. Sort of scary and really cool.