Enterprise cloud storage biz Box adds universal admin search, new security features, & more

Enterprise cloud storage startup Box has added a slew of updates to its main product, including universal administrator search, more mobile security features for iOS and Android, and multiple e-mail domain support, the company announced Thursday morning.

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Box now has more than 11 million users across 120,000 businesses, with penetration in 82 percent of the Fortune 500. Its most recent customer wins include Netflix, Allergan, Avaya, Lennar, MGM Resorts, Stanford University, and Webcor Builders. The latest round of product updates will help the company further separate itself from more consumer-focused cloud storage options like Dropbox, SugarSync, and Google Drive. Box CEO Aaron Levie once even drew me a diagram to show how the company sections itself off versus competitors.

“We want users to be delighted at the same time we want IT to be happy and feel safe,” Box enterprise general manager Whitney Tidmarsh-Bouck told VentureBeat. “That experience is rare.”

The first major update is a new administrator console that offers enterprise-wide search. If you ever need to search across an entire organization for a specific file or folder, you can now do so. There’s also more granular permissions settings you can set as an admin that help set how files are shared inside and outside the company. “When your organization has multiple thousands of users, this is needed,” Tidmarsh-Bouck said.

Second, Box has added more granular mobile security features for Android, with an iOS update “coming soon.” Not only can IT admins add passcode locks for mobile users, but they can also turn offline access permission on and off.

Third, the company now has support for multiple e-mail domains. If you are a large company that owns many small companies, for example, you can now share and collaborate with Box even if your colleague uses a different domain. The company gave me the diagram below to help illustrate a business with multiple domains, saying that now team members who have “@pg.com” and “@crest.com” address can now more seamlessly collaborate.

Finally, Box has pushed out activity notification archiving that will specially target regulated industries like health care and finance. Box administrators can now log things like Box comments and tasks with already established monitoring systems.

Tidmarsh-Bouck said that the company has also modified its enterprise licensing agreement (ELA) to make it more flexible. There’s now pricing options that cover a multi-year contract, which can save an organization money and simplify the process of adding new accounts. If your organization wants to slowly roll out accounts, the new ELA agreement can cover a cheaper overall price per each new account.

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Administrator search photo: Box