Microsoft Teams With Smaller Rival Box on Cloud Technology
June 27 2017 - 9:29AM
Dow Jones News
By Jay Greene
Microsoft Corp. cut a deal Tuesday with competitor Box Inc. to
partner on cloud-computing technology in an effort to get ahead in
the emerging business.
Box, like Microsoft, offers web-based document-storage services.
In years past, Microsoft might have shunned helping a rival, but
three years into Chief Executive Satya Nadella's tenure, it is
working more with competitors to win over customers.
"This is an example of where Microsoft has really changed over
the last three or four years," said Scott Guthrie, executive vice
president of the company's Cloud and Enterprise group.
Box provides file sharing and storage services to customers
looking to stash documents, videos and other types of data online.
Microsoft's Azure cloud-computing service offers a technical
foundation upon which companies like Box can run their services, in
addition to its cloud-computing applications, such as its OneDrive
online service that competes with Box.
The two companies will now work to better integrate their
products and sell the combined services. In addition, Box will
offer its products on Microsoft's Azure cloud-computing service.
And Box also intends to use Microsoft's artificial-intelligence
technology, which could help customers with such tasks as video
search and translation services, Box co-founder and CEO Aaron Levie
said.
Box already partners with Microsoft's cloud-infrastructure rival
Amazon.com Inc. Customers can choose to run Box's services in
Amazon Web Services data centers. Box will continue to work with
Amazon, but Mr. Levie said the new deal, which includes integration
with Microsoft products as well as joint sales efforts of combined
services, "goes well beyond what we've done with Amazon."
The deal also opens up markets for Box where customers are
required to keep their data stored in the countries in which they
reside. In April 2016, the company introduced Box Zones to address
data-sovereignty issues; the service is now available in eight
countries. A Box spokesman said the new partnership will allow Box
to take advantage of Microsoft Azure's global footprint and offer
in-region storage in six additional countries.
The combined sales effort will begin shortly. The technology
integration should occur over the next two quarters, Mr. Levie
said.
For Microsoft, the deal builds on efforts to work with rival
technologies, rather than fight them. Mr. Guthrie compared the move
to Microsoft's embrace of the rival Linux operating system as well
as its decision to make its Office productivity suite of programs
available on Apple Inc.'s iPad.
Box isn't as fierce a rival to Microsoft as Linux and Apple have
been. The companies have worked together before. More than a year
ago, they agreed to make Box's services work more smoothly with
Office.
Still, Mr. Levie said he has noticed Microsoft's "new tone and
tenor" in working with tech rivals, rather than just battling
them.
Write to Jay Greene at Jay.Greene@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
June 27, 2017 09:14 ET (13:14 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2017 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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