Have No Fear of Consumerization of ITCloud-based online file sharing and collaboration strikes a perfect balance between IT’s need for control and the user’s need for mobility and productivity.

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In December 2007, a leading technology research firm issued a report enumerating 10 reasons why corporate IT departments should steer clear of supporting the iPhone, which had just hit the market four months earlier.

The following month, a mere five months after its release, Apple announced that it had sold over 2.3 million iPhones. Business users, like consumers, flocked to the iPhone despite the research firm’s warnings and the fact that, indeed, most IT departments at the time did not support it.

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Consumers in driver’s seatIn an exhaustive 2011 report, Enterprise Strategy Group reported that about 40 percent of deci-sions regarding the use of alternative application delivery models are made or influenced by non-IT executives or business unit owners as opposed to IT. And no wonder. Cloud applications are readily available via download and can be provisioned by anyone almost instantaneously. This has under-standably led to hand-wringing among IT staff because it means they are not in complete control over what devices, software and services are being used to access and share company data.

But the consumerization of IT is happening whether IT likes it or not. Experts suggest that IT accept this and begin supporting certain consumer-oriented technologies, or risk irrelevance.

PricewaterhouseCoopers, in a recent study, noted that, “Most organizations have not yet fully real-ized that their customers and employees expect

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to do business anytime, anywhere and in any way. Leading firms, however, understand that being behind the curve on the strategic use of tech-nology not only puts their firms at a competitive disadvantage but weakens their ability to interact and strengthen relationships with customers.”

“You can’t collaborate if you can’t share files,” said John O’Neill, professor of counselor educa-tion at CUNY. “You can’t collaborate if you can’t centralize your materials somewhere and access them when you’re not together as a group.”

Cloud computing and collaborationCloud computing is a driver, perhaps the biggest driver, of the consumerization of IT. It gives an ever-mobile and far-flung workforce the flexibility to access and collaborate over corporate data from anywhere and from any device. Mobile workers now expect to be able to communicate and share information with internal and external colleagues via the platform and device of their choice.

And cloud is the enabler. As PwC notes, the cloud has erased the edges of the organization such that the “processes and relationships that used to end at your four walls are now out on mobile devices, in the cloud and exchanged on social media.”

Leading online collaboration and file-sharing providers like Box sit at the center of these three megatrends. ESG says that cloud-based file sharing and collaboration is the poster child for alternative application delivery models being made or influenced by those outside of IT.

In a 2011 study by IDG Research, which surveyed over 260 large enterprise customers, 86 percent of knowledge workers placed a very high level of importance on the ability to collaborate with internal and external stakeholders and having access to the most up-to-date corporate information. The benefits of this include increased productivity, better-informed decision-making, better alignment between teams, management, increased innovation and better visibility into ongoing projects.

Collaboration and file sharing have been around for decades, but cloud computing has made it infi-nitely better for mobile workers. Simply put, VPNs, email and FTP servers are impractical for modern collaboration. These last-generation collaborative solutions are slow (VPN), cluttered and incapable of sharing large files (email) and unsecure (FTP).

The iPhone and the iPad, and to a lesser extent earlier game-changers the iPod and iTunes, represent the type of powerful, easy to use (not to mention, exceedingly cool) products and ser-vices that we consume on our own. It only stands to reason that we’d want the same positive experience in our professional lives.

This phenomenon, known as the consumerization of IT, is hap-pening in many if not all corporate IT departments. It has shifted the balance of power such that users, not IT departments, are introducing or at the very least influencing new technologies, including mobile devices, cloud services and applications, into the corporate mix.

Tools alone are not enoughThere are no fewer than a dozen providers crowding the market for real-time cloud-based collaboration and file sharing. But simply providing the tools to collaborate, store and share documents in the cloud is not nearly enough for large enterprises.

For cloud-based collaboration and file sharing to be truly effective, appropriate and viable for the enterprise, it needs to be bulletproof. That means:

n Tight security and control over corporate data

n Robust administrative controls, including centralized control

n Integration with enterprise applications

n SLAs, guaranteed uptime

n Minimal latency

n Redundant infrastructure with robust backup and disaster recovery

n Dedicated support for enterprise customers

n Massive scale

ESG found 43 percent of respondents cited data security and privacy concerns as the leading inhibitor to adoption of cloud computing. Thirty-two percent said they feel they’d be giving up too much control.

Box is uniquely positioned to meet the needs of business users who want instant access to synchronized data from any device, and IT staff, which need to maintain control over company data.

“We are solving a universal problem,” says Robin Daniels, head of enterprise product marketing at Box. “Every company and business user creates lots of content and needs to share and collaborate on that content.”

Box’s solution meets all of the aforementioned enterprise requirements. Specifically:

“We are solving a universal problem. Every company and business user creates lots of content and needs to share and collaborate on that content.”

Robin Daniels, enterprise product marketing, Box

n Administrators control all settings for Box users; this includes password policies, managing permissions for access, preview, editing, downloading and sharing of docu-ments, and automatic expiration dates for file access.

n Box integrates with leading single sign-on providers, integrates with Active Directory/LDAP and SAML 2.0 and ADFS 2.0 for easy integration with existing user management services.

n Box flags potential security concerns with reporting and audit trails for every action or activity within the Box environment; it gener-ates reports and sorts by group, date range, file or user.

n Data is encrypted during transit to and from the Box cloud and while stored within Box; encrypted keys are stored in separate locations and rotated frequently.

n Administrators have control and visibility into user accounts even when accessed through mobile devices; integration with MobileIron, Good Technology, AirWatch and other applica-tions enables remote wipe, device encryption and auto logout.

n Integration with over 200 enterprise applica-tions including salesforce.com, Jive, Docu-Sign, NetSuite, Microsoft Office and Google Docs. Box also integrates with some of the most common enterprise content manage-ment systems, like SharePoint and Docu-mentum, through an add-on product called CloudConnect.

Other unique attributes of the Box solution include the range of compatibility with mobile devices (iOS, Android, WebOS, Windows Mobile) and a powerful preview feature that lets users view documents directly within a browser, without the need for specific applications installed.

Enterprise software providers are rushing to embrace the power of social technologies (once again, a concept born in the consumer space) to enhance collaboration. One only has to witness the slew of recent activity—dozens of acquisitions of small social companies by larger players in the last 18 months—to see where things are headed.

Box is already at the forefront. Social workflow features in the platform offer a way to connect people and content. For example, users can assign tasks to colleagues directly within the

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comment stream, tag a collaborator to automati-cally send an email, respond to comments via email by responding directly to an email notifica-tion alert, and edit content directly from the file preview page, with revisions automatically saved back to the Box cloud.

Activity streams and real-time updates are also crucial for those who work collectively, and Box provides workers with notifications of activity in their network wherever they are, instantaneously.

For these reasons, ESG concluded, “When it comes to more sophisticated collaboration features, enterprise focus, security, administration and application integration, Box currently has an advantage over its peers.”

The future of businessForward-thinking companies know that innovation cannot thrive entirely within their four walls. Stake-holders, including internal or external colleagues, partners, suppliers and customers, need to collaborate and share information and they need to do it in real time. Innovation happens out in the marketplace, globally, collectively. That’s why the cloud and mobile are so important.

PwC wrote that the four key trends of aggressive cloud adoption in the enterprise are the increased mobility for employees and customers, vast

and persistent use of social media, and unprec-edented access to data.

Cloud-based collaboration and file sharing enables a level of accessibility, portability and productivity that was simply not possible in the PC era. It’s not surprising that cloud computing, mobility and social technologies have crossed over from the consumer space to become main-stream in corporate America. (Consider that a Google search for the term “post-PC era” returned over 37 million results, and that just covers the past two years.)

In his 1995 instructional guidebook, The Under-ground Guide to Telecommuting, Woody Leonhard wrote that, “Work is becoming something you do, not a place you go.”

He was referring to telecommuters, but it applies to today’s mobile workers. The concept requires that every enterprise application be available on every device.

Today, as has been the case for several years, the most exciting innovations in technology are happening in the consumer space. IT executives should acknowledge and meet user demands for consumer-oriented technologies but choose prod-ucts and services with enterprise-class security and administration. Admittedly, that is a short list today but it is growing rapidly.

ESG put it succinctly: “Consumerization is not going away. IT can’t continue demanding that everyone have a Windows-based laptop or PC, log into a VPN and deal with the resulting latency and connectivity issues of remotely logging into a shared file system.

“Consumerization and mobility are driving a growing need for online file sharing and collabora-tion solutions. IT would be well served to get in front of this trend proactively rather than waiting to get dragged in once its users have made their own personal bets on preferred services.” n

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“When it comes to more sophisticated collaboration features, enterprise focus, security, administration and application integration, Box currently has an advan-tage over its peers.”

—Enterprise Strategy Group 2011 report

For more information, visit box.com