Google And Box Team Up For Docs Integration And Springboard Search

Google has become the latest heavyweight technology firm to partner with Box, offering customers integrations with Google Docs and Google Springboard.

Users will be able to create and edit Slides, Docs and Sheets within the Box platform, replicating similar functionality with Microsoft Office 365.

Google Springboard is essentially enterprise cloud search and applies Google’s search technology across its own applications, including Gmail, Calendar and Drive, as well as third party apps like Box.

Google Box

Box CEO Aaron Levie and Google’s cloud head Diane Greene detailed the partnership at BoxWorks 2016 in San Francisco, during which the two discussed the advent of the cloud and the importance of partnerships.

Greene previously served as the CEO of VMware and assumed her current role last November as the company sought to compete with more established business rivals like Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure.

She oversees a team that controls all of Google’s cloud businesses, including Google for Work, Cloud Platform, and Google Apps, and is responsible for development, marketing and sales.

“It’s a fairly complete technology stack,” she said of Google’s cloud operations. “Google’s got a pretty excellent infrastructure built for scale and the only way we can do what we do internally is with a lot of automation. It has to be cost effective. We have the best data management, best data analytics.

“We’re not going to build it all, so we’ve adopted a very partner-centric approach. We will never surprise you: If we’re building it, you’ll know [about it].

“What we’re doing is taking the drudgery of work and unleashing human creativity. The more you can be unconstrained about how you use your time, the more faster you can move, solve your problems and have fun.”

Greene and Levie did not discuss much else about the arrangemenmt, only that more would be revealed soon. Levie was also joined on stage by Polly Johnson from Microsoft and Inhi Cho Suh from IBM – two other major Box partners.