Box Looks To BYOD With Subspace Acquisition

Cloud storage and file-sharing specialist Box has acquired a Berkeley, California-based company called Subspace.

The startup helps businesses by offering a browser-based solution for staff that allows them to access enterprise software from any device. The move is part of Box’s increasing focus on the business community and BYOD in general.

BYOD Move

Box is perhaps best known for its free cloud storage and file sharing services, designed to help users securely share and access files online. It is very much a rival to players such as Dropbox, and in 2012 it opened its first international headquarters in London.

Box recently acquired Airpost, a provider of cloud service security and access management services. And now the company announced that it has brought Subspace, and its seven staff members will join the Box team to “help extend the security, compliance, and control features of Box’s core platform.”

Subspace developed a ‘containerized browser’, which is essentially a customised version of Google’s Chrome web browser. This browser is able to run on mobile devices and is designed to give employees access to enterprise software running in the cloud.

“The proliferation of cloud and mobile technology has produced immensely powerful tools for individuals to do their jobs better,” said Box CEO and co-founder Aaron Levie in a blog posting. “But as enterprises have embraced these technologies, data has become more fragmented across a range of devices, as well as accessed from a variety of networks, making the protection of content exponentially more difficult.”

Compliance Worry

“To solve this challenge, businesses are left with few good solutions,” said Levie, highlighting the control and compliance challenges faced by IT management teams in regulated industries such as financial services, healthcare and life sciences.

“The Subspace team has been thinking about these same challenges for years, and we’re excited for their leadership in taking Box’s efforts to the next level,” said Levie. “The Subspace team will let us go even deeper with our security and data policies, enabling reliable corporate security policies, even when content leaves the Box platform to be accessed on a customer or partner’s device.”

The Subspace service will shut down next month, according to a blog post from Subspace.

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