Box and Google Cloud Expand Strategic Partnership Across Generative AI and Go-to-Market
In a strategic move aimed at transforming enterprise work and fostering the power of generative AI, Box, Inc. and Google Cloud have announced an expanded partnership. This collaboration sees Box, the leading Content Cloud provider, integrate with Vertex AI, a component of Google Cloud's artificial intelligence offerings. The goal is to create innovative AI features that streamline data processing and analysis, enhancing the capabilities of the Box Content Cloud, which is now directly accessible to customers through Google Cloud Marketplace.
Why This Matters
In the ever-evolving landscape of digital technology, organizations need to adapt quickly to stay competitive and meet the changing needs of their customers. The partnership between Box and Google Cloud signifies a concerted effort to provide businesses with tools and capabilities that enable them to work more efficiently and make data-driven decisions.
The Vision Behind the Partnership
The leaders of both Box and Google Cloud have expressed their enthusiasm for this partnership and its potential to revolutionize the enterprise landscape. Aaron Levie, co-founder and CEO of Box, highlighted the significance of working with strategic technology platforms that help businesses work smarter and more productively. Google Cloud, as a crucial partner, is instrumental in helping Box serve its customers on a global scale.
Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, also emphasized the importance of generative AI in streamlining labor-intensive processes faced by enterprises, such as manual data entry and analysis. This partnership will offer customers tools that enable them to rapidly process and extract insights from documents stored within the Box Content Cloud. By automating the identification and tagging of key context from documents, businesses can save time and allocate resources to more impactful work.
New AI Capabilities Powered by Vertex AI
Box has chosen to integrate with Vertex AI, Google Cloud's unified AI platform, to deliver a range of capabilities designed to enhance user experiences and streamline operations. These new features include intelligent search, more personalized user experiences, and the ability to automatically classify and label documents at scale. Users can also define metadata templates for custom use cases, populate metadata fields, and integrate with various systems to automate workflows. The platform's ability to recognize and extract metadata in different languages ensures consistent term recognition, irrespective of location.
Box's Availability on Google Cloud Marketplace
As part of the expanded partnership, Box is now available on Google Cloud Marketplace. This integration simplifies the process for customers already using Google Cloud infrastructure to access Box's content management platform. This change brings several benefits, including reduced procurement cycles, consolidated Google Cloud billing, and potential cost savings against existing Google Cloud commitments.
Box's Expanded Use of Google Cloud
Box has long relied on Google Cloud for data storage and compute services globally. However, with this partnership, Box is taking its collaboration with Google Cloud to the next level by adopting several new services in the areas of networking, data analytics, and machine learning. These services aim to provide faster performance and higher reliability to customers. Box will use Google Cloud as a storage option for Box KeySafe, enabling customers to use their encryption keys within Box and granting them more flexibility in managing their encryption keys.
Additionally, Box will use Google Cloud's global networking infrastructure to enhance network communication with customers, leading to faster content transfers and increased productivity worldwide. The integration of Google Cloud Bigtable will boost performance and uptime for the core data systems that drive Box, ensuring a more reliable service to secure and manage all content needs. Google Cloud BigQuery will power Box's data application, analytics, and insights, allowing Box to deliver comprehensive data-driven insights to customers more efficiently.
Google Workspace Integrations
Building upon existing integrations with Google Workspace, Box customers can create, collaborate, and save content in Google Docs, Sheets, or Slides directly from the secure Box Content Cloud platform. The Box for Google Workspace add-on enables seamless and secure productivity and collaboration across Google Workspace, including Gmail, Google Drive, and Google Calendar.
These integrations enable customers to create, edit, and open content using Google Workspace's collaboration tools directly within Box. They can also add Box files to emails, save email attachments to Box without leaving Gmail, attach Box files, and link Box Notes directly to Google Calendar events. These integrations are essential for combining the security, compliance, and governance capabilities of Box with the productivity and collaboration tools of Google Workspace.
Pricing and Availability
Box is available on Google Cloud Marketplace as of the announcement date. The new Box AI metadata extraction API functionality is expected to begin rolling out to Box Enterprise Plus plan users in beta next year. The Box for Google Workspace integration and add-on are available for all Box and Workspace users.
The expanded partnership between Box and Google Cloud promises to bring new AI capabilities, streamlined operations, and enhanced performance to businesses in various industries. It represents a commitment to helping organizations leverage cutting-edge technology to operate more intelligently and efficiently. As enterprises face increasingly complex challenges, the tools and features provided by this partnership may prove instrumental in helping them thrive in the AI-first era. The availability of Box on Google Cloud Marketplace simplifies access for users already utilizing Google Cloud infrastructure, streamlining procurement processes and billing.
With Box expanding its usage of Google Cloud across different services and applications, it is evident that both companies are invested in delivering enhanced solutions to their customers. As organizations increasingly rely on data-driven insights and intelligent automation, this partnership signifies a significant step toward meeting the evolving needs of the modern enterprise.