Box.net starts move to new Palo Alto office (exclusive)

Enterprise cloud-storage provider Box.net is preparing to move into new quarters, a larger office space located between Palo Alto and Los Altos Hills, VentureBeat has learned. Box.net chief executive Aaron Levie confirmed the move in a phone call Tuesday afternoon.

The move, which will happen in the next four to eight weeks, follows the quick growth the company has seen since it launched in 2005. Box.net raised $48 million in its most recent round of funding. At the time, Levie said Box.net would use the funding to double its sales and engineering teams. The current, cramped office in Palo Alto is located next to electronics retailer Fry’s.

“We were basically sitting on top of each other,” one Box.net employee said.

Box.net currently has 6 million users. Some 60,000 businesses employ its cloud-storage software, including 73 percent of Fortune 500 companies. That figure is up from around 66 percent in February.

The company provides businesses with a way to store and share files securely over the web. The files are uploaded to remote servers where anyone with permission can access them. Employees can also edit the files through Box.net’s web-based interface and leave comments and notes.

Box.net has also been pushing its cloud-storage application to mobile devices — particularly the iPhone operating system and Google’s mobile operating system, Android. As of January, the Box.net application was downloaded more than 250,000 times on the iPad. The company launched the Android application in the fourth quarter of 2010 and already has 70,000 downloads. Box.net is working with Samsung specifically to further develop its application on Android tablets like the Samsung Galaxy Tab.