Marketing

I’m not discounting Box.net’s recent mobile moves, but from a platform perspective, the SMB market is really where it needs to focus.

All this SharePoint competitive stuff makes for good fodder but it’s not terribly realistic to compete against SharePoint within the confines of big corp. USA – otherwise deemed “the enterprise.”

“In the last 18 months, we’ve watched as Box.net has transitioned from a cloud storage solution into an entire cloud-based content management system. At this point, Box.net is actively pitting itself against Microsoft’s SharePoint for small and large business users.”

Too many companies have invested too much in SharePoint to move away so quickly. Box will be bought and sold or become three different things before SharePoint subsides in the enterprise.

You see, people don’t install portals anymore, they install SharePoint. And those SharePoint implementations – good or bad – are the gateway to the rest of the business apps and workflows that users access to get work done.

I do think Box.net can continue to make inroads however, with mobile obviously being one of the catalysts. Mashable’s Christina Warren describes its mobile improvements.

"Box.net 2.0 adds in file preview (similar to the enhancements rolled out last month for the full site), the ability to comment and view comments on files or folders, the ability to share files or folders straight from the app, and the ability to view updates to an account or project."