At AIIM/info360 today, Box.net made a major announcement regarding connecting traditional ECM systems behind the firewall to the Box cloud.

The new system lets enterprise customers link their existing content management solutions to Box, providing file sharing, storage, archiving and collaboration in the cloud.

The Cloud Connect product was designed by EntropySoft, a content integration vendor, and is available immediately as an add-on for Box Enterprise customers.

A few weeks ago Google released Google Cloud Connect, which gives Microsoft Office users access to Google's cloud services. This is a similar approach, but instead of Microsoft Office, Box.net is connecting to 40 ECM packages including Open Text, FileNet, SharePoint, Documentum, Oracle and many others.

Box.net hasn't kept its ECM aspirations secret. Their current offering, while impressive as far as it goes, has come up short on a lot of standard ECM functions.

Speaking about the January 20th update, analyst Alan Pelz-Sharpe of the Real Story Group said: "Box.net have certainly been gaining some attention this past 18 months, and for lightweight departmental document management needs they have a fair amount of traction."

Aaron Levie, CEO at Box, sees this as a way to introduce the cloud to the enterprise. "We want to help the world's largest enterprises realize the benefits of cloud-enabled content, and building a seamless connection between their existing infrastructure and the cloud is a crucial first step," he said.

This approach is a nice incremental step to help Box do just that and gives them entree into the largest enterprises, while playing to their product strengths. What's more, it doesn't ask too much of IT. Instead of going whole hog into the cloud, they can use existing systems behind the firewall, and introduce a cloud layer.

Pricing will vary depending on the size of the integration.

For more information:
- see the Box.net press release

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