C o m p e t i t i v e R e v i e w o f S e l e c t e d C l o u d F i l e S h a r i n g a n d C o l l a b o r a t i o n S e r v i c e s

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1 E X C E R P T C o m p e t i t i v e R e v i e w o f S e l e c t e d C l o u d F i l e S h a r i n g a n d C o l l a b o r a t i o n S e r v i c e s Maureen Fleming I N T H I S E X C E R P T Global Headquarters: 5 Speen Street Framingham, MA USA P F The content for this excerpt was taken directly from Competitive Review of Selected Cloud File Sharing and Collaboration Services, by Maureen Fleming and Kate Silverstein (Doc # ). All or parts of the following sections are included in this excerpt: IDC Opinion, In This Study, Situation Overview, Future Outlook, and Essential Guidance. I D C O P I N I O N File sharing services allow an individual to synchronize files across all devices used by that individual. Adding collaboration to the mix means that groups of users are able to work together and share files across the team, who are then also able to access the folders and files from any common device, whether PC, Mac, smartphone, or tablet. Key findings in this document include: Any product supporting today's knowledge worker cuts across a multitude of technologies, and cloud file sharing and collaboration (CFSC) services are no exception. Embedded content management, managed file transfer (MFT), storage, collaboration, security, integration, and mobile capabilities are all elements of the offerings. We evaluated CFSC services provided by Box, Dropbox, and YouSendIt. Collectively, these companies manage more than 90 million registered addresses, up nearly 88% from The three services grew, two in triple digits, in 2011 to more than $120 million in combined revenue. While there are comparable capabilities across the three vendors evaluated, differences in strategy and focus create wide differences across their offerings. For broad enterprise use, Box scored the highest. Box focuses on collaboration and the ability to view and edit content without the need to manually download a file. It also has a growing ecosystem of cloud and on-premise partners. I N T H I S S T U D Y This study looks at the cloud file sharing and collaboration services market and evaluates the capabilities of three leading providers Box, Dropbox, and YouSendIt. We assess the capabilities overall and across three common use cases: personal user, informal workgroup, and structured use across a department or enterprise. Filing Information: July 2012, IDC #234770e : Excerpt

2 This market is changing rapidly, with many vendors entering the market. The document does not cover all of the offerings but provides an approach to evaluation that can be applied across the market for enterprises planning to purchase these services, for vendors determining how to partner with CFSC services providers, and for competing vendors. We also look at how this market is evolving with the entrance and pending entrance of new competitors. S I T U A T I O N O V E R V I E W Cloud file sharing and collaboration services are becoming modern file systems for knowledge workers, supporting common characteristics of knowledge worker behaviors: Work anywhere Heavy use of social networking to perform job Dependency on Internet and always being connected Integrate personal and work life, with porous separations between the two Use a mix of personal and enterprise-owned devices to perform job Access files from a broad selection of device-specific and cloud applications Collaborate inside and outside the enterprise with virtual teams assembled based on skills and availability Work on projects that cover a spectrum of confidentiality requirements Any product supporting today's knowledge worker cuts across a multitude of technologies, and CFSC services are no exception. Embedded content management, managed file transfer, collaboration, security, integration, and mobile capabilities make it difficult to map these offerings into any one existing market. CFSC services allow workers to share files across their devices and with other people. Most services require users to move files to a central cloud hosting facility offered as a service. They also provide a mechanism for the subscriber to grant access to folders and files to other people. And they provide access to these files across common devices, such as a PC, Mac, smartphone, and tablet computer. Depending on the capabilities of the offerings, CFSC services also support various options associated with jointly editing and creating new versions of content, approving content, digitally signing content, and sending links to the content to third parties. CFSC must securely and accurately deliver files and folders to the vendor's cloud host service. It also must be able to provide secure and reliable access and synchronization to the devices of authorized users. It is common for knowledge workers to develop multimedia content. That means CFSC services also must be able to deliver files of sizes measured in gigabytes. 2 #234770e 2012 IDC

3 At this point, these services don't necessarily cut down on network capacity as users request files. But they can cut down on the total storage capacity of individual files spread across a work ecosystem as well as reduce the storage and people costs of keeping track of current and out-of-date versions of content that are stored across multiple systems. In the past, content was shared by delivering the file over the network or by copying onto a variety of nonnetworked devices. With CFSC services, instead of users requesting copies of content, they ask for access to the content. This is similar to enterprise use of shared drives but much simpler. More importantly, these services move work beyond the firewall, aligning with distributed, virtual teams. CFSC services are disruptive to some markets. For example, the people-centric segment of managed file transfer software is impacted by these services. In response, many of the vendors are evolving their core file transfer offerings to extend to private and public CFSC services. This document focuses on enterprise use of CFSC services. Features are classified and compared in the sections that follow. Additionally, because of differences in strategy and how offerings are packaged, we built comparison models using three common work scenarios: Single user Informal workgroup Structured enterprise use C o m p a r i s o n o f C l o u d F i l e S h a r i n g a n d C o l l a b o r a t i o n S e r v i c e s C a p a b i l i t i e s To look at overall functionality of CFSC services, we assessed Box, Dropbox, and YouSendIt to identify, organize, compare, and test features to determine what core capabilities were offered and which ones aligned the best with common use cases. For the overall assessment presented in this section, we looked at each vendor's enterprise service. For the use cases in the Evaluation of Services by Use Case section, we looked at the services offered to support each use case. Organizationally, we clustered features into the following six major categories: Access and file management features File transfer features Sharing and collaboration features Security features Administrative and reporting features Integration and interoperability features 2012 IDC #234770e 3

4 Each of these vendors has rapid release cycles, which means that new capabilities appear regularly. Table 3 provides an evaluation of identified features officially released through first quarter Overall, we identified and mapped 135 features into this model. Each category and subcategory is built on a 100-point scale. This neutralizes the difference in categories where there may be many features in one and not as many in another, yet both are important. Box scored the highest overall and had the richest set of features across four of the six categories. YouSendIt scored in the middle, with best-of-breed capabilities in both the file transfer and security categories. Both are suitable for a broad class of enterprise use cases, and enterprises making a selection will have to compare some of the differences in features to determine which is most suitable. The differences are outlined in the sections that follow. Dropbox scored the lowest in enterprise-class CFSC services, primarily because it has only modestly entered this market. Its strategic focus is on the consumer market, and its offering is optimized for smaller teams working on projects. Dropbox also has the most efficient and fastest infrastructure for file sync, which is a foundational functionality for any provider in this market. This model also is a supply-side view of capabilities in that we look at features from the perspective of the service offerings without judging the importance of one feature compared with another. Usage scenarios are presented in the Evaluation of Services by Use Case section. These weigh the importance of features for each use case. T A B L E 3 C o m p a r i s o n o f C l o u d F i l e S h a r i n g a n d C o l l a b o r a t i o n S e r v i c e s C a p a b i l i t i e s Score (%) Number of Features Box Enterprise Dropbox Teams YouSendIt Workstream Enterprise Average Access and file management File transfer Sharing and collaboration Security Administrative and reporting Integration and interoperability Total Note: Features assessed in each category are unweighted. Vendors received a 1 if they had a feature and 0 if not. Scores in each category and overall were normalized to a 100-point scale. Source: IDC, April #234770e 2012 IDC

5 E v a l u a t i o n o f S e r v i c e s b y U s e C a s e Scenario 3: Structured Enterprise Use The third use case is an enterprise that chose to standardize on a CFSC service to support a variety of activities, including: Access for individuals workers to sync files across their devices to support a mobile and flexible workforce. The enterprise's goal was to have less than 0.1% of annual knowledge worker downtime due to hardware failures while also reducing overtime emergencies for the IT organization. Work teams across the enterprise use their CFSC service to collaborate inside the enterprise and with contractors and third-party services firms to support the creation, revision, and design of assets, whether the company Web site, content used for marketing and sales, development of plans, and so forth. The selection of the CFSC service was part of the enterprise's newly embraced cloud-first strategy. The enterprise also adopted a cloud-based CRM and made a decision to integrate the two services, managing the sales activities in the CRM service and managing the content used to support marketing and sales in the CFSC service. To implement the CFSC service, IT was charged with integrating with the enterprise's directory services and with the CRM service. An administrator was named from the business side to coordinate with IT and with the business units, and a team was formed to develop policies on the type of content that can and cannot be stored in the CFSC service in support of regulations and confidentiality requirements. The CRM team worked with the CFSC team and business users to design a structured folder system for use with the CRM. The CRM folder system involved the design of folders that would allow authorized users inside and outside the enterprise to create, revise, approve, and publish into folders as content was developed or changed, and sharing privileges were assigned based on the folder and folder topic. Users from the CRM system are able to select current content from the designated folders and are able to send to their prospects and customers as links and attachments. Each sales team was provided with a folder for collaborating to customize existing and create new content, and they can invite others to participate in the development of the new content such as a response to an RFI or a sales presentation. Members of the team can revise content, post comments in a discussion thread, and assign tasks. The team's folders are accessible from both the CFSC service and the CRM service. In this scenario, most of the features of a CFSC service described in the previous sections are required. Table 12 compares CFSC service capabilities configured to support this use case. The scores in each service represent the percentage of total points possible IDC #234770e 5

6 This enterprise scenario shows a clear separation between YouSendIt and Box from Dropbox. The latter does not have an enterprise strategy, while Box and YouSendIt are heavily focused on capabilities required by enterprises. Box scored the highest in this scenario, with about 86% of the configured functionality. The key differentiators are Box's focus on cloud-based editing and collaboration, integration with cloud-based services, and features used to administer the firm's CFSC service at scale. YouSendIt focuses on device-based productivity and outperforms on security and file transfer capabilities. And Dropbox has the best underlying technology for efficient syncing. T A B L E 1 2 C o m p a r i s o n o f C F S C S e r v i c e s : S t r u c t u r e d E n t e r p r i s e o r D e p a r t m e n t a l U s e C a s e Score (%) Number of Features Total Possible Score Box Enterprise Dropbox Teams YouSendIt Workstream Enterprise Average Access and file management File transfer Sharing and collaboration Administrative and reporting Security Integration and interoperability Total Source: IDC, April 2012 B o x V e n d o r S n a p s h o t Box was launched in 2005 under the leadership of Aaron Levie (CEO) and Dylan Smith (CFO). Based in Palo Alto, California, the company has raised roughly $162 million in venture capital funding over the past six years, with its most recent round including the venture funds of salesforce.com and SAP. In August 2011, Box had 6 million registered users, and by February 2012, that number grew 67% to 10 million. IDC estimates Box grew in triple digits in 2011 to roughly $45 million in revenue. As of March 2012, Box users access 100 million files per month. The cofounders' original vision for Box which Levie and Smith began in college was a cloud-based service that would allow users to share, access, and store files. In 2007 and 2008, the company focused on adding functionality around business 6 #234770e 2012 IDC

7 collaboration. It also began to partner with other cloud service providers to extend the product's capabilities. Key partnerships included salesforce.com, Zoho, and Google. In 2009, Box introduced the current three levels of subscriptions: personal, business, and enterprise editions. Box acquired Increo Solutions to add content preview capabilities, which was launched in 2010 along with desktop sync for business and enterprise customers. In 2010, the company also completed an SSAE 16 Type II audit, delivered the first native clients for the ipad and Android smartphones, and integrated with Google Apps, salesforce.com, NetSuite, and SugarCRM. The vendor also announced the availability of unlimited storage for its enterprise-level customers in In 2011, Box delivered a variety of features that enhanced its capabilities in an enterprise, including providing enterprise customers with the ability to bidirectionally connect more than 40 on-premise applications including SharePoint and Documentum. It also began to offer full text search and additional security such as mobile device tracking and management. Box's strategy is to offer a functional free service while providing tiers of features valuable enough to warrant a paid subscription. With a focus on paid use, the company also began investing in the buildout of Box operationally and technically as an enterprise cloud service. Box has different tiers of service based on storage quota and features: The free version of Box Personal includes up to 5GB of storage but does not include desktop sync. File sizes of up to 25MB can be uploaded. A Personal plan for roughly $120 a year includes 25GB of storage and the ability to send files of up to 1GB. For $240 annually, a user has up to 50GB of storage in addition to the ability to send up to 1GB files. None of the personal plans include automated desktop sync. The Box Business plan is priced at $180 a year per user, with a minimum of 3 and maximum of 500 users, and includes 1TB of storage and ability to send up to a 2GB file size. A variety of additional features are available to subscribers, including the administrative console for access management and reporting and the ability to automatically sync files between devices and the Box cloud. Box Enterprise is priced at roughly $420 a year per user, with no stated minimum users. Storage is unlimited and features, more extensively detailed in previous sections of this document, include custom branding, group-based access, and integration with Active Directory and a variety of additional cloud and on-premise offerings. Box Enterprise also offers onboarding services and customer support. Evaluat ion of Capab il iti es Figure 1 shows Box Enterprise capabilities compared with the average for the vendors. Box performed above average in every area except file transfer. In that category, it performed slightly under average IDC #234770e 7

8 Box currently positions itself as a "cloud content management" solution, and that really is where the differentiation shows up. The service's main points of differentiation are content editing and viewing capabilities, collaborative features including the ability to initiate tasks, more than 150 plug-ins and integrations with third-party services and software available through Box's marketplace, and robust permissioning and onboarding that is useful for enterprise administration. F I G U R E 1 B o x E n t e r p r i s e C a p a b i l i t i e s C o m p a r e d w i t h A v e r a g e Access & File Management Integration File Transfer Management Sharing & Collaboration Security Box Enterprise Average S o u r c e : I D C, H i g h l i g h t e d F e a t u r e s Tasks: Applying structure to content-oriented, ad hoc collaborative work often involves systemization of tasking, assigning deadlines, review and approval processes, and other tasks that have traditionally been carried out using , paper, and other point-to-point or non-transparent tools. Cloud collaboration has the potential to move some enterprise content management functionality to the cloud, particularly around approval workflow. Figure 2 provides a view of how users initiate a task using Box. Features include assigning tasks and setting due dates and reminders of pending or missed deadlines. These capabilities are all offered exclusively by Box. 8 #234770e 2012 IDC

9 F I G U R E 2 B o x T a s k i n g Source: Box, 2012 Policies and Permissions: Policies can also include a permissions structure as shown in Figure 3. For example, administrators can designate certain users as "owners" and others as "viewers." Owners can download, upload, edit, and share content; viewers can only view content in their browsers. There are many ways to structure permissions, and services vary on the level of granularity administrators can employ IDC #234770e 9

10 F I G U R E 3 R o l e - B a s e d P e r m i s s i o n i n g w i t h B o x Source: Box, 2012 Folder and File Share Integration: Box has focused on integrating with applications to allow users to access their Box-based content in a multitude of settings, including salesforce.com, SAP StreamWork, and Google Apps. Both YouSendIt and Box integrate with Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Office. We tested a custom integration of Box with Appian Cloud to learn more about how easy or difficult it is to create a custom integration using a CFSC service and to test the performance of a cloud composite application built from multiple cloud services. In this case, we tested the ability to manage content and sharing permissions in Box and automate the business process, including tasks and the user interface, with Appian Cloud. Our test showed that, content is created and stored in the appropriate folder in Box, links to the files are added to the appropriate sections as part of the task work, a new user is assigned a task in Appian Cloud with a link to the content, and the task assignee accesses content stored in Box by clicking on the link embedded in the task. This is shown in Figure #234770e 2012 IDC

11 F I G U R E 4 C u s t o m I n t e g r a t i o n o f B o x w i t h A p p i a n C l o u d Source: Box, 2012 D i f f e r e n t i a t i n g S t r e n g t h s Direct viewing and editing from browsers Integration with mobile applications supporting viewing, editing, and annotating Version control that allows users to identify new versions and then to select the current draft Comments and threaded discussions Ability to assign tasks and task deadlines Wide variety of Box-compatible applications that run on mobile platforms and on desktops available in an apps store like environment Affordable price for adoption of Box Enterprise for small teams that need enterprise-class features S e r v i c e C h a l l e n g e s Box has a weekly release of new features and capabilities. The benefit of this is its ability to respond rapidly to customer needs. The challenges include the inability for enterprises to absorb changes at this pace and the risk that a change could have unexpected consequences. Anything associated with user interfaces, permissioning, and policies should roll out carefully and fully featured. Given Box's roots in viral use of the firm's service, the freedom for knowledge workers to work productively is one of the largest value propositions of Box. Selling at an enterprise level can produce the opposite results. Far too often, the decision makers are not the end users and know far less about what users need, but they require the ability to tighten up security. Balancing out these oftencompeting concerns places a burden on vendors to offer granular controls to resolve the issues. Box needs to balance the freedom knowledge workers need 2012 IDC #234770e 11

12 to do their work with enterprises trying to control how work is performed through adoption of policies that provide for high granularity at multiple levels. Box assumes that users migrating to new machines will begin from a clean slate in the My Box sync folder and have been optimized to sync from Box cloud to My Box. When that is not the case and there is content in the My Box folder, sync can be extraordinarily slow. Care should be taken in determining the best approach to new machine migration of Box folders. This may seem like a small problem, but in the nine months spent researching and writing this document among three test users, there were two new machine migrations and one new laptop added to the group. Box's underlying sync technology is built around syncing the entire file regardless of how much has changed in the file. While common, this is not efficient. Evaluat ion by Use Case Box's performance by use case aligns well with the company's strategy. Box Enterprise had the strongest performance of the three services evaluated for our structured enterprise use case. Box's approach to integration (deploying initially, then provisioning new users), tasks, and mobile and browser editing are all examples of an understanding of enterprise requirements. Box Business also scored well for the informal use case, particularly with the various collaboration and sharing features as well as mobile support. Box Personal underperformed in the individual use case, primarily due to the fact the users are not able to sync their files automatically from their PC or Mac (see Figure 9). F I G U R E 9 B o x C a p a b i l i t i e s b y U s e C a s e Informal Team Overall Structured Enterprise Personal Box Average Source: IDC, #234770e 2012 IDC

13 Recommendati on s Our evaluation shows that Box is a strong offering that is suitable for enterprises of all sizes considering adopting a CFSC service. In addition, Box Professional is highly rated for team use. The few technical issues are more than compensated for by the breadth of functionality of the current offering. We expect the pace of innovation to continue over the next 24 months. In particular, we believe the strong partnership effort around its ecosystem of applications that allow users to create and edit content across all endpoints make this service highly available to knowledge workers anytime, anywhere, and on any device. Box's efforts to integrate with adjacent cloud offerings and with key knowledge worker applications will increase the likelihood that, over time, Box will be increasingly available from any relevant cloud service or application. To prepare for the future waves of competitive offerings, Box may want to consider supporting ultrasecure use cases, including direct point-to-point file delivery without the need for files to rest on Box.com. It may also want to federate access across many different file sharing services. F U T U R E O U T L O O K CFSC services play an important technical role in the cloud and a collaborative role in the extended enterprises. Our evaluation of CFSC services provides a structure to evaluate these services, whether you are looking at one of the three services we assessed or others that you are also in the process of evaluating. As with any purchase, it is important to understand the uses cases and align capabilities with those use cases to determine the best fit. Feedback from knowledge workers is critical in this evaluation. Because this is a new category, users are developing unexpected and innovative use cases. For enterprises building a justification for a CFSC service, there are several key factors to take into consideration: Business benefit of keeping knowledge workers productive even when their core PC or Mac is not working Value of allowing workers to work from anywhere without spending time manually preparing files for use at home Labor and storage costs of maintaining multiple versions of files across different systems, particularly for enterprises with a cloud-first strategy Reduced pressure on IT to approve outsider access to internal systems Savings in systems scale-out and storage costs by removing file attachments It is also important to be pragmatic about security. Workers are exercising judgment every day to balance their need to do their jobs with the required levels of 2012 IDC #234770e 13

14 confidentiality. In most knowledge worker centric use cases, the security levels offered by CFSC services are adequate for outside the enterprise collaboration and even better than the use of . If a team is collaborating on marketing and advertising to launch a new financial service, for example, this does not have the same level of regulation and confidentiality required for online banking. In evaluating, it is important to align security requirements with the types of content that are being developed and managed in a CFSC service. E S S E N T I A L G U I D A N C E CFSC services play an important technical role in the cloud and a collaborative role in the extended enterprises. Our evaluation of CFSC services provides a structure to evaluate these services, whether you are looking at one of the three services we assessed or others that you are also in the process of evaluating. As with any purchase, it is important to understand the uses cases and align capabilities with those use cases to determine the best fit. Feedback from knowledge workers is critical in this evaluation. Because this is a new category, users are developing unexpected and innovative use cases. For enterprises building a justification for a CFSC service, there are several key factors to take into consideration: Business benefit of keeping knowledge workers productive even when their core PC or Mac is not working Value of allowing workers to work from anywhere without spending time manually preparing files for use at home Labor and storage costs of maintaining multiple versions of files across different systems, particularly for enterprises with a cloud-first strategy Reduced pressure on IT to approve outsider access to internal systems Savings in systems scale-out and storage costs by removing file attachments It is also important to be pragmatic about security. Workers are exercising judgment every day to balance their need to do their jobs with the required levels of confidentiality. In most knowledge worker centric use cases, the security levels offered by CFSC services are adequate for outside the enterprise collaboration and even better than the use of . If a team is collaborating on marketing and advertising to launch a new financial service, for example, this does not have the same level of regulation and confidentiality required for online banking. In evaluating, it is important to align security requirements with the types of content that are being developed and managed in a CFSC service. 14 #234770e 2012 IDC

15 C o p y r i g h t N o t i c e This IDC research document was published as part of an IDC continuous intelligence service, providing written research, analyst interactions, telebriefings, and conferences. Visit to learn more about IDC subscription and consulting services. To view a list of IDC offices worldwide, visit Please contact the IDC Hotline at , ext (or ) or sales@idc.com for information on applying the price of this document toward the purchase of an IDC service or for information on additional copies or Web rights. Copyright 2012 IDC. Reproduction is forbidden unless authorized. All rights reserved IDC #234770e 15