Dropbox has unveiled the first comprehensive upgrade to its cloud-storage product aimed at corporate users.
With the move, the $US4 billion-valued Dropbox, which has been a popular sensation in the consumer market, is squarely taking on Box, a similar file-sharing service that has positioned itself in recent years as the option for security-conscious corporate IT departments.
Dropbox's new software allows IT administrators to closely track which users have viewed a file and when it was viewed, and to instantaneously grant or withhold file permissions.
The software also allows administrators to rope off certain files so they may be edited but not downloaded or shared in any way — a feature viewed as critical, for instance, in law, medicine or banking.
The new "dashboard" is the first major overhaul since the company introduced its Dropbox for Teams product for businesses 18 months ago, and comes as the company seeks to remake its image into a serious contender in an enterprise file-sharing market estimated by research firm IDC to be worth $US20 billion by 2015.
"When we asked our customers what they needed from us to use Dropbox in the enterprise, this is what they said," said Sujay Jaswa, Dropbox's top business executive. "We'll introduce some features, see what our customers are asking for, then keep building."
Although they serve a largely invisible role in personal computing, Dropbox and Box — valued at a hefty $US1.2 billion itself — have been the subject of intense interest in the Valley as two dueling competitors racing toward potentially high-profile public market debuts.
The pair have pursued different market segments — until now.
Founded in 2007 by Drew Houston, 29, and Arash Ferdowsi, 27, two Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduates, Dropbox rapidly accumulated 100 million users by touting its ease-of-use and polished interface that syncs files across multiple devices and operating systems.
Box, by comparison, just said this month it passed the 15 million user mark, but it has devoted considerable resources selling its product to C-level decision-makers, including those in European companies.
For Dropbox, this week's update "is the first step in the direction for us to open up a much bigger market," said Anand Submarani, the Dropbox for Teams product manager.
Dropbox's last two high-level hires have been sales executives from Apple and Salesforce.com, said Jaswa, adding that the Dropbox for Teams division is one of the company's highest priorities.
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