Sure there’s some kind of fruit-related event going on right now, but this week is also BoxWorks, the annual conference for the enterprise content cloud platform provider. At that event, Box CEO Aaron Levie and Google’s SVP of Google’s cloud offerings Diane Greene are announcing a partnership that turns Box into a third-party storage option for Google Docs, Sheets and Slides, and that makes Box-stored content searchable via Google Springboard.
The tie-up makes Box a storage option for housing Google documents, spreadsheets and slide presentations, letting users of Google’s cloud-based productivity suite work directly from their existing Box-based storage repositories. That’s a useful addition for sure, because while a number of enterprise organizations use Google’s offerings for collaboration and creation, a decent number of those actually use Box for cloud-base storage since it’s the solution that was actually designed specifically for business use.
The integration also means users go Google Springboard, the enterprise-focused search engine it revealed earlier this year that acts a digital assistant surfacing content from across an user’s Google Apps, and which employs AI to make smart recommendations about what info to present to users and when. The new Box link-up for Springboard will surface content stored in its enterprise accounts via search alongside Google-stored content.
It may seem a little odd for Google to be collaborating with Box on cloud storage when Google has its own offering there, which is also a revenue driver for the search giant. But the partnership is actually only really likely to benefit customers of both groups, without really biting into the customer base of either, given the distinctions between what Box and Google Drive can provide.