The Evolution of Box: From File Storage to AI-Powered Content Management
“This is a very big deal. The way to think about it is that for the first time ever within Box, you’re going to be able to build no-code applications that let you render your content for any business process that you want.”
It was almost two decades ago that Box first emerged, originating in a dorm room at the University of Southern California when Aaron Levie had the idea for an online file storage and sharing system. However, as the industry quickly became saturated with similar services, Levie pivoted the company’s focus to enterprise content management in the cloud. This was a bold move in an industry dominated by on-prem giants such as Microsoft, EMC, IBM, and OpenText.
Traditionally, enterprise content management, whether on-prem or in the cloud, involved storing, managing, securing, and governing unstructured content. This was no easy feat, as unstructured content is far more complex to handle than structured data found in neat columns and rows in a database.
But just as Box shifted its focus to content management, the industry itself is once again changing. And Box is at the forefront of this transformation, as Levie has always had a talent for anticipating and embracing industry shifts. This time, Box is embracing the growing trend toward AI and workflow automation within software.
Last year, Box acquired Crooze, a company specializing in workflow automation and metadata management, with integrations into Box. This made it a logical acquisition target for Box, as managing metadata is crucial for automation in content management, enabling software to identify and understand the type of content when there is no other structure present. This, in turn, allows for the automation of workflows involving various types of content, including documents, videos, images, and audio, reducing the burden of repetitive tasks that were previously handled by bored and annoyed humans.
However, Box’s use of Crooze and generative AI may be part of a much larger industry shift for content management, potentially as significant as the move from on-prem to the cloud that Box helped pioneer 15 years ago.
Putting Content to Work
Levie is truly enthusiastic about the possibilities that Crooze technology can bring to the Box platform. As he explained in an interview with TechCrunch, “This is a very big deal. The way to think about it is that for the first time ever within Box, you’re going to be able to build no-code applications that let you render your content for any business process that you want.” This means that users can now create custom applications reflecting their unique business processes, making their content much more valuable and practical.
Levie understands that the traditional folder structure can only take a user so far, particularly when managing large amounts of unstructured content like contracts. It quickly becomes overwhelming and challenging to locate a specific contract or specific details within a contract by sifting through virtual folders. However, with a no-code application development environment, users can create an interactive dashboard displaying all of their contracts’ data and automate workflows surrounding them, including editing, approvals, and electronic signatures.
Generative AI also plays a vital role in this process, enabling users to query the content in the folders for better understanding and locating specific pieces—acting like a personalized search engine for a user’s content. Furthermore, generative AI’s summarization capabilities provide users with a summary of a large amount of content without having to read every line. In terms of workflow, generative AI’s coding capabilities allow for the automatic creation of custom workflows based on specific requirements.
Box is entering a new phase, according to analyst Jason Ader of William Blair, who closely follows the company. He states, “Now I think we’re seeing Box 3.0, where it is moving into this AI and workflow realm and really going at the heart of a lot of those vertical industry workflows. These are tied to contracts and digital assets in obviously document-heavy types of industries where frankly AI has a massive role to play because it can automate a lot of that work.”
Indeed, the way customers view content is changing. Instead of simply managing it, they want to put it to work, similar to how data platforms like Snowflake and Databricks have moved beyond pure data management to building applications on top of it. The practice of just storing content in repositories is no longer enough, and AI is driving the push towards automating workflows and producing practical business outcomes.
Alan Pelz-Sharpe, founder and principal analyst at Deep Analysis, emphasizes this point, stating, “At the end of the day, enterprises want to leverage that content — not just store it — to drive automation and improve business outcomes. And hence acquisitions like Crooze provide ever simpler tools to develop those outcomes. Crooze is probably the most significant acquisition Box has made to date.”
The Evolution of the Content Management Industry
Box is not alone in its pursuit of AI and workflow automation. But as the capabilities of generative AI continue to advance, enabling the generation and query of content stores, content management and knowledge management (business memory) are merging. Moreover, the ability to generate code could allow companies to create custom workflows on the fly based on specific requirements and types of content.
Forrester analyst Cheryl McKinnon, who has covered content management for two decades, sees the entire content management industry moving in the same direction as Box. In her opinion, this is a natural progression, stating, “I see this is just moving up the maturity curve, and this shift towards workflow and AI is absolutely where the market has been moving. This is kind of a turning point where now it’s not just about storing files and folders, but can we put that stuff to work? Can we think about content, not just from the storage point of view, but across the context of a whole business activity?”
Pelz-Sharpe agrees, declaring, “The ECM sector as a whole (which includes Box) now has the biggest window of opportunity they have had in 20 years, opened for them by the interest and embrace of organizations large and small to leverage AI.” He believes that ECM firms are uniquely positioned to take advantage of AI due to their focus on ensuring accurate, relevant, secure, and timely unstructured data—an essential factor for successful AI models. However, only time will tell if Box and other ECM companies will capitalize on this opportunity.
