This morning at its BoxWorks event, cloud storage and file management company Box announced that its previously promised integration into Office 365 is now live in beta.
The company also indicated that it is working to extend its integration into Office 365’s online tools, and, if possible, to Office for iPad. On stage at the conference, Box CEO Aaron Levie asked the audience to tweet at current Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on Twitter — it’s @SatyaNadella, if you were curious — for his assistance in allowing Box to integrate with Office for the iPad.
Microsoft, which has a customer base that reaches into the enterprise market, may not be too receptive to the pitch. Microsoft sells OneDrive for Business, Sharepoint, and other storage and collaboration tools that Box competes with. That fact may make its willingness to help Box somewhat limited.
Levie directly cited customer demand as the reason for his proposed integration into Office for iPad. That’s notable as it indicates that there is large enterprise uptake of the Microsoft productivity suite inside of corporations.
Box’s CEO previously told TechCrunch that Office 365 has done “incredibly well,” so to see the smaller company integrate with the service is not surprising. Box’s customers, which skew heavily towards the business space, are likely Office users, and thus are potential Office 365 users. The overlap is considerable.
Following its Office 365 integration beta kickoff announcement, Box pivoted to discussing its BoxNotes product, which competes with Office. The company shared a few vanity metrics about the service, but no hard user figures. BoxNotes competes with Office in that it allows for the creation, and editing of text files.
Integration, and competition, are therefore the tones of the day.
