Box Takes Aim at Legacy ECM, More News

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has been called a lot of things, but this has got to be a first: 

“[Trump] is like your legacy content management and collaboration technology. Lots of vague promises that don’t seem to be fulfilled … Really it’s about building walls to make it hard to share the best ideas and to collaborate. And he seems to be successful even though he has a crazy user interface. I don’t understand how this works.” 

Box CEO Aaron Levie made the joke at the Redwood City, Calif.-based company’s annual customer conference, which finished yesterday in San Francisco. 

This wasn’t the first time Levie has taken a swipe at Trump, but in this case he was supporting the conference’s broader message — the “all new Box” wants to take on legacy enterprise content management systems.

The company revealed a number of new partnerships and capabilities to support this goal.

‘All New Box’ Takes Shape

Among them was Box Relay for automated workflow creation, the first release from its year old partnership with IBM. The company also announced a partnership with Google, which will integrate Box’s file storage with Google’s Docs, Sheets and Slides as well as the Google Springboard search engine.  

Those were the marquee moments at the conference, but other announcements added to the sense that this was, as Rand Wacker, vice president of Enterprise Products at Box described it, a “watershed” moment for the company. 

Jeetu Patel, senior vice president of platform and Chief Strategy Officer at Box, wrote about some of the less glamorous releases aimed at helping developers and customers transform business processes. Beyond the Relay and Google announcements, releases included:

• Support for new content types: Support for several new file types including HD video, 360 images and videos, 3-D models and VR files. These new file types are available today for web applications and will be available for mobile in the coming months.
• Annotations and watermarking: New capabilities in the embedded preview of a file that allow end users to add annotations and developers to display a watermark on files that contain sensitive information. Annotations, available today in JavaScript and in the coming months for iOS and Android, allow end users to add point comments and highlight text directly on an embedded file preview.

Box also introduced a redesigned developer console, overhauling the user experience and including a new user interface which offers guided walkthroughs for configuring applications, easy access to support, documentation and notifications. 

Xerox Launches New Line of Printers

Norwalk, Conn.-based Xerox Corp. continues to develop and push out new releases in spite of being in the middle of a restructuring which will see the company split into two companies: a document technology company and a business process outsourcing company. 

Like others in the productivity space, Xerox is focused on increasing its products efficiency. Slow print speeds, poor image quality and complicated set ups are a few of the factors that impact productivity when it comes to printers and other document-related software and hardware.

Xerox today introduced the Xerox WorkCentre Multifunction Printers (MFPs) and Xerox Phaser 3330, a set of new black-and-white printers that it claims anyone — even the least tech-savvy person in the office — can operate.

The printers simplify set up and connect readily to mobile devices. Internal Wi-Fi connectivity and Near Field Communication tap-to-pair allow mobile workers to link their phones and tablets to print from any location.

The new features aim to improve productivity and print quality, no matter the device used to send the job.

PDsurF Smart PDF Platform

Finally this week, Toronto-based PDsurF announced the beta launch of its smart, seamless PDF document and e-book management platform.

The PDsurF platform uses machine learning and machine intelligence to help improve storage, search and findability of pdfs and e-books for those in the educational, professional, commercial and non-profit sectors. It also organizes online document libraries.

The platform includes an online PDF document viewer and collaboration tools for users to view, highlight and annotate PDF content, as well as share documents and comments with teammates.

PDsurF offers three different editions, including a free basic package. The Premium Edition costs $4.99 per user per month, and the enterprise edition adds substantial capabilities at an unknown cost.

Title image Aaron Levie