The Six Five team discusses Box’s event, BoxWorks 2022.
If you are interested in watching the full episode you can check it out here.
Disclaimer: The Six Five Webcast is for information and entertainment purposes only. Over the course of this webcast, we may talk about companies that are publicly traded and we may even reference that fact and their equity share price, but please do not take anything that we say as a recommendation about what you should do with your investment dollars. We are not investment advisors and we do not ask that you treat us as such.
Transcript:
Patrick Moorhead: Let’s get into BoxWorks 2022. I spent half my day yesterday in the morning in Austin at the analyst event, and I always appreciate how much time CEO Aaron Levie will give to it. He’s very conversational, he’s easy get to know. Of course I had to first thank him on his upgrade that he got that sent his stock up about eight percent. But I really just saw that not as a, “Oh what a surprise.” It was more like, “Well it’s about time people see the value of Box.”
Because as a company, it keeps moving along. And for those of you… I’m sure all of you have used Box in some way, shape, or form, but essentially they’re the masters at content management. Securing it, getting signatures on it. But in the past few years, Daniel, like you and I have talked about with the SaaS offerings, everybody is finding the need to build some kind of a suite out of it. Okay? And the highlight of this event and the analyst was how they are doing in some of these areas.
So first off, Box, a few months ago, had preannounced that it was doing what’s called box notes, which is exactly what you can imagine. Their take is really about simplicity and the ability… oh, and by the way, getting it for free, rolled into more of a box content, notes being exactly what you would expect.
The other thing that is coming beta in November is what’s called Box Canvas. And many of these SaaS companies are… And I think, gosh, you even talked about Salesforce adding it, is a collaborative environment where teams can work and put content in. Consider it Figma for everybody else. Not for the designers, but for the marketing people, for the sales people, for the finance people, where they can work on something at the same time, and it’s called Canvas.
And the final thing that they talked about at their show was more information on what’s called content insights, which will be available this month. But essentially with anybody who has a content solution, you can get basic type of stuff, information on who accessed it and when did they access it and what time. This gives insights into anything that you would want about demographics, how long that they looked at the content.
And I wouldn’t call this… This is not an external marketing tool, I think. I think it’s more of an internal tool to know who internally at the company is viewing your content. I wrote a Forbes article couple months ago about when they first introduced these, and I have a draft of an article completed, talking about further information on all of these announcements.
Daniel Newman: So good update there Pat, This is one we’ll keep pretty brief on my end. I wasn’t able to attend BoxWorks, but I have been following your commentary, and we do follow the company at a high level.
Obviously content collaboration and management of enterprise content is critical, and this is what Box has been trying to sell for a long time. Question marks I have about Box and I’ll continue to have about Box is, are they a feature that’s a company now that needs to be part of a suite, or are they really in a position to run on their own?
I think Aaron Levie’s done a great job. I think long term the company, obviously, has built a strong reputation. It’s been a constant target of potential takeovers, and I think that’s because it has a lot of really great assets and capabilities that could be embedded inside of a bigger software suite. But they’re also continuing to build and expand, to your point. They’re building a more collaborative environment, they’re building greater intelligence, they’re building tools.
But I think in an era of how we work shifting so rapidly, the Microsoft Teams, the Slacks, these are going to be the places where something like Box is going to be utilized at the highest clip. So I still to this day wonder if a Box-Salesforce deal could be in the future. But I need to check out all the announcements, Pat, see where it’s going. But good overview, and-
Patrick Moorhead: I got to tell you that would be a great combination.
Daniel Newman: Wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t it? I know, I love it. I’ve been using that as my favorite… When Business Insider calls us every six weeks to write that article again, the 15 Hottest and Most Likely M&As in SaaS, just Box already. But you know what? At the same time, they’re doing good things. Believe that they have something, and sometimes being under someone else’s-
Patrick Moorhead: Box has whiteboarding too. It’s kind of perfect. I did ask Aaron about messaging, and he did say, “We’re very happy integrating Slack and Teams and whoever else needs to be there.” But I love that Daniel. Puts a big smile on my face, it’s so smart.
Author Information
Daniel is the CEO of The Futurum Group. Living his life at the intersection of people and technology, Daniel works with the world’s largest technology brands exploring Digital Transformation and how it is influencing the enterprise.
From the leading edge of AI to global technology policy, Daniel makes the connections between business, people and tech that are required for companies to benefit most from their technology investments. Daniel is a top 5 globally ranked industry analyst and his ideas are regularly cited or shared in television appearances by CNBC, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal and hundreds of other sites around the world.
A 7x Best-Selling Author including his most recent book “Human/Machine.” Daniel is also a Forbes and MarketWatch (Dow Jones) contributor.
An MBA and Former Graduate Adjunct Faculty, Daniel is an Austin Texas transplant after 40 years in Chicago. His speaking takes him around the world each year as he shares his vision of the role technology will play in our future.
