The evolution of Box from an idea to let its customers share and manage and access their content from anywhere to a cloud file-sharing and storage start-up to a business serving over 150,000 businesses, including 92 percent of the Fortune 500 continues. DataCenter Knowledge reports that half of Box’s activity comes from outside of the U.S. and 40% comes from mobile devices.
In order to support the growth, DCK says Box is touting Accelerator, its global data transfer network, as well as adding several key certifications in a bid to make its global enterprise customer base happy. Further infrastructure expansion lies ahead. “We really think we’re solving a problem for an end-user,” said Jeff Quesser, VP of Technical Operations for Box. “But we’re also solving an IT concern; they can get all the auditing, compliance they need. This can be run in a very safe way.”
With over 150 percent growth last year the company has had to tailor its service in the best ways possible to serve the enterprise crowd. The blog says 50 percent of Box activity is happening outside of the US, either from international firms or U.S. enterprises with a global presence. Mr. Queisser told DCK. “Speed is absolutely critical. If you have sites all around the world, you need blazing fast download speeds.”
This enterprise customer need was the impetus behind Box Accelerator. The company has established upload endpoints in key global data center hubs featuring end-to-end encryption. The company has built patent-pending intelligent routing and optimization technology that delivers uploads 2.5 times faster on average. It has built a network that helps you get data into Box as fast as possible.
Box Accelerator tweaks the TCP stack to get better performance. Mr. Queisser explained to DCK.
“(With) most consumer operating systems, networking stacks are not optimized … There’s the bandwidth delay problem. TCP is an amazing protocol, but wasn’t made for these types of distances and this kind of bandwidth. It’s a testament to how amazing the protocol is that it’s done what it’s done.”
The article says the biggest problem for Box is how to handle inbound traffic.
“What we’ve done is unique in that it’s optimizing inbound data … How do you ingest 100MB rather than send it out? The other piece is that we built these nodes, and a routing feedback loop technology. It determines the fastest way to get to Box. Sometimes it’s an accelerator node, but there are times when direct is the fastest path.”
Accelerator started off small but has added nine new points of infrastructure. It’s a small footprint that provides a big performance boost. The goal is to have cloud-based endpoints in all regions. The article claims that Neustar conducted a performance analysis test and found that “Box had the lowest average upload time across all locations, about 66% faster than the closest competitor.”
The company is also planning to apply this technology to file downloads. Accelerator has added speed to enterprise uploads, but the company told DCK it is looking to speed up downloads in a similar fashion. “We need to do that in a way where it’s encrypted and it isn’t cached,” said Mr. Quiesser.
It in terms of certifications, Box has recently added ISO 27001 and support for HIPAA. ISO 27001 is the international standard for information security management systems (ISMS) and demonstrates how the policies and controls put in place at Box protect user data.
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Better performance and security are great things from a cloud vendor. But what impact does the NSA spying scandal is going to do on the cloud storage business model. There could be repercussions if vendors don’t cooperate.
What do you think? is the Box network ready for the enterprise?
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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.
