Quest for the Cloud

The good folks at Box.net contacted me regarding their “Box.net vs SharePoint” challenge that was kicked off at Enterprise 2.0 last week in Boston.   Many will recognize box.net as one of the more mature yet fledgling “online file sharing and backup” providers, so it is good to see these types of vendors move on from just being a file repository to a more collaborative workspace. 

The exciting part is that I see more and more competitors entering the workgroup space for collaboration, and on the high end, we’re starting to see real, credible Cloud-based solutions for enterprise backup (more in a future blog post).  So how is the industry evolving? 

A deeper look at box.net may provide some clues… 

The move is actually not that easy - file based sharing systems have been around for quite some time (you could argue that the first such Web-based system was a simple website that exposed a specific directly, with Apache rendering a file list).   Since then we’ve had HTTP upload, WebDAV, and a zillion different types of plugins and solutions.

At last week’s show, very few vendors were willing to launch a shot straight across the bow of SharePoint, so it is refreshing to see a break from the “we have no choice but to work with SharePoint rather than compete with it” strategy that many are faced with.   SharePoint 2010 is still a few months away, so this is perhaps the first volley. Everything I’ve seen so far from Microsoft shows that they “get it” and some of the juicier features in SharePoint 2010 are still under covers even now. 

It will be interesting to see how these vendors fare against what some call “the ultimate file repository” and how Microsoft reacts when faced with smaller and more nimble opponents like box.net.

Disclaimer:  I am not sponsored, nor affiliated with box.net, although I have had a dormant “lite” (free) account for over a year.

Leave your comments or drop me an email with your thoughts.