Palo Alto, CA (PRWEB) September 10, 2009
Box.net today brought the power of the cloud and online collaboration to the iPhone, the fastest growing mobile app development platform. The company’s new OpenBox Mobile program lets iPhone app developers integrate Box.net’s content management and collaboration platform into their apps — providing users with new ways to manage, access and share content on their iPhone. The program is made especially for applications that rely heavily on serving up user-generated content, including productivity documents, text files, PDFs, images, audio, videos and other application-specific files. Launched initially for iPhone developers, OpenBox Mobile will extend to Palm webOS, Android and BlackBerry developers in the near future.
Box.net has been working with a number of iPhone app developers behind the scenes to integrate Box’s content management and sharing capabilities. iPhone apps that feature Box.net integration today include iThoughts, Smart Recorder, iBlueSky and Readdle. QuickOffice, iRec, JotNot and mySticky are also working on Box.net integration and will be launching soon.
Box.net provides flexible online collaboration that currently helps more than 50,000 businesses easily share content, move company file systems online, and create team workspaces. The company’s open developer platform has given Box.net customers the ability to do more with their content using some of the best third-party services from Google, FedEx, eFax, Salesforce.com and dozens of others. OpenBox Mobile extends the open platform to the iPhone, giving Box.net customers additional ways to do more with their content on-the-go.
“OpenBox Mobile is a major component of our overall strategy to provide an open platform that gives customers choices and the power to do more with their content using best-of-breed services they want to use,” said Aaron Levie, co-founder and CEO of Box.net. It’s an approach that continues to re-inforce Box.net’s position as a powerful alternative to Microsoft SharePoint for cloud-based content management and collaboration.
According to a recent survey by ABI Research, mobile cloud computing will deliver annual revenues of more than $20 billion in the next five years, yet there are barriers that must be overcome for mobile cloud computing success. Box.net’s new OpenBox Mobile program will help developers – and their customers – overcome hardware limitations to derive a host of benefits.
“Box.net’s OpenBox Mobile brings the power of sharing and collaboration to the iPhone,” said Craig Scott, creator of the iThoughts mind mapping application for iPhone and iPod Touch. “By integrating Box.net into iThoughts, we eliminate the need for our users to constantly sync their iPhone and PC to access, share and collaborate on content created in iThoughts. With Box.net, our users can realize much more of the potential the iPhone has to offer.”
Benefits to Developers
Mobile app developers are giving consumers so many great apps to create all kinds of content – and ultimately, people want to share content, they want to protect it and they want to access it in as many places as possible. OpenBox Mobile:
- gives app developers the tools to deliver this functionality quickly and easily in their apps,
- helps developers get around some key limitations in developing for mobile devices – working with a fixed amount of storage on the iPhone, a siloed content creation experience for the user, and the difficulties around sharing content from mobile apps; and
- puts their apps front and center with the more than 3 million users and 50,000 businesses that use Box
Benefits to Consumers
iPhone apps users are frustrated that they cannot easily share content from within their mobile apps. And by using iPhone apps with Box.net integration, consumers can:
- save and protect all the content they create on their mobile apps in one place with Box.net including productivity documents, audio files, images, video or any other file.
- eliminate the need to constantly sync an iPhone and PC to access content – whether it’s created in a mobile app or a desktop app,
- eliminate having to choose which content – from growing list of content – to keep locally on their mobile device; and
- access a platform that makes all content instantly accessible and sharable.
Access to OpenBox Mobile
The OpenBox Mobile API is free and iPhone app developers can get started by going to box where they can create a Box.net account and then sign up to join the developers program. After setting up an account, developers can review documentation for the API, sample code for mobile integrations and the other programs offered, as well as directions to start a new project on the OpenBox platform. Developers can get started on projects on their own immediately as well as receive online assistance from Box.net’s platform team.
About Box.net, Inc.
Founded in 2005, Box.net (box) now serves over 50,000 companies from small businesses to Fortune 1000 that look to Box to simplify online content management, accelerate team productivity and connect employees with a familiar interface that anyone can use. Box.net is a privately held company headquartered in Palo Alto, CA, and is backed by venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson and U.S. Venture Partners.
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