Speed Up File Sharing With Box Accelerator
File sharing and synchronisation services is one of the hottest areas of social business right now. It seems like everyday a new vendor is entering the market or enhancing their portfolio. Just this past week Acronis acquired GroupLogic, SkyDox merged with Workshare, and Salesforce leaked a rumour that they will be launching their own file sharing tool named ChatterBox this week at their DreamForce conference.
Not to be upstaged, veteran file-centric collaboration vendor Box (hot off their $125M funding round) has news of their own, announcing a major update to their architecture called Box Accelerator. This new feature increases the speed of file uploads (or, decreases the time it takes to upload files) by utilising a series of "edge nodes" which they have deployed around at several locations around the globe. (see press release for details)
So what's an edge node and what does it mean to users of Box?
To understand how this works, think of the following analogy:
It's interesting to note that the fastest path is not necessarily the geographically closest edge-node, as other factors come into play such as traffic congestion. Looking at the diagram again, imagine there is a traffic accident just before ramp 1, so you wisely take side roads over to ramp 2 to avoid the traffic. Box claims to do the same thing by using patent pending code that figures out which edge node to use each time in order to ensure the fastest upload.
My Point of View: The Significance Is Enterprise Grade Collaboration
As I mentioned above, file-sharing and sync services are very hot right now. As the vendors in this market compete for customers, they are each looking for ways to differentiate themselves. While some vendors remain focused on consumer level file sharing (e.g. backing up your computer, or sharing files with friends and family), Box is squarely focused on helping employees collaborate (both internally and externally) around the content stored in business documents.
While faster upload speeds may not matter a great deal when sharing a simple presentation, it could have significant impact for industries that deal with extremely large files or time sensitive data. For example, customers in the entertainment industry who deal with massive multimedia files could benefit from the speed increase as people will spend less time waiting and more time working. Industries where seconds count, such as financial or medical will also benefit from Box Accelerator.
It's important to look at the big picture. This announcement is about more than just speeding up file sharing. Box Accelerator shows that Box is focused on creating a cloud based collaboration infrastructure that is designed to meet the requirements of large enterprise customers. While front end UI features are important, so to are back-end elements such as scalability, security and reliability. I expect to see more infrastructure related announcements from Box as they continue to focus on enterprise grade collaboration.
For a list of all the vendors I track in this market, please see here.
Disclosure: Box is a customer of Constellation Research
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Not to be upstaged, veteran file-centric collaboration vendor Box (hot off their $125M funding round) has news of their own, announcing a major update to their architecture called Box Accelerator. This new feature increases the speed of file uploads (or, decreases the time it takes to upload files) by utilising a series of "edge nodes" which they have deployed around at several locations around the globe. (see press release for details)
So what's an edge node and what does it mean to users of Box?
To understand how this works, think of the following analogy:
- Imagine you need to drive from point A to point B.
- You have your choice or routes, including local streets with slow speed limits or a speedy highway.
- There are multiple on ramps between A and B that connect the streets to the highway.
- The more time you spend on the highway the faster you get to your destination.
- Now imagine point A is the location you are uploading files from and point B is the Box data centre where your files are stored.
- Edge nodes are like the on ramps, they connect slower local networks to the fastest routes on the internet to improve the speed of your uploads.
It's interesting to note that the fastest path is not necessarily the geographically closest edge-node, as other factors come into play such as traffic congestion. Looking at the diagram again, imagine there is a traffic accident just before ramp 1, so you wisely take side roads over to ramp 2 to avoid the traffic. Box claims to do the same thing by using patent pending code that figures out which edge node to use each time in order to ensure the fastest upload.
My Point of View: The Significance Is Enterprise Grade Collaboration
As I mentioned above, file-sharing and sync services are very hot right now. As the vendors in this market compete for customers, they are each looking for ways to differentiate themselves. While some vendors remain focused on consumer level file sharing (e.g. backing up your computer, or sharing files with friends and family), Box is squarely focused on helping employees collaborate (both internally and externally) around the content stored in business documents.
While faster upload speeds may not matter a great deal when sharing a simple presentation, it could have significant impact for industries that deal with extremely large files or time sensitive data. For example, customers in the entertainment industry who deal with massive multimedia files could benefit from the speed increase as people will spend less time waiting and more time working. Industries where seconds count, such as financial or medical will also benefit from Box Accelerator.
It's important to look at the big picture. This announcement is about more than just speeding up file sharing. Box Accelerator shows that Box is focused on creating a cloud based collaboration infrastructure that is designed to meet the requirements of large enterprise customers. While front end UI features are important, so to are back-end elements such as scalability, security and reliability. I expect to see more infrastructure related announcements from Box as they continue to focus on enterprise grade collaboration.
For a list of all the vendors I track in this market, please see here.
Disclosure: Box is a customer of Constellation Research
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