Picture credit: Box/IBM
Tech giant IBM and enterprise cloud storage provider Box have announced a wide-ranging partnership, aimed at content management and social collaboration to improve the enterprise cloud and digital push.
The two companies aim to integrate their existing products and services to develop new solutions across multiple verticals, from medicine, to engineering and academia.
Among the developments proposed, Box will integrate with IBM’s enterprise content management solution, as well as collaborating to integrate Box into IBM’s business email and social collaboration platforms, IBM Verse and IBM Connections. IBM will leverage Box’s platform and APIs in its iOS applications, while Box will for the first time enable customers to choose a partner’s cloud platform for data storage.
“This partnership represents the work of hundreds of individuals over the past nine months, bringing together the strengths of two very different but similarly-motivated companies,” Aaron Levie, the CEO of Box, wrote in a blog post. “IBM was founded more than 100 years ago to push business technology forward, and continues to be the longest lasting and most durable company in the tech industry. We couldn’t [be] prouder to be able to work with them as we work toward creating the digital enterprise.”
The companies also promise integration with Watson Analytics, with IBM’s supercomputer linking up to content stored in Box. Watson Analytics launched in September 2014 and uses natural language to spit out its algorithms and analysis, meaning a much easier use case.
When CloudTech spoke to IBM to find out more about Watson’s working methods last year, this was a key component of its viability – and its cloud-based nature made it even more accessible. Watson doesn’t go so far to say whether the data you have is right or wrong, but it does show the strength of the data and how confident you can be in making key business decisions with it.
IBM’s extensive partnerships range from long time ally SAP, with SAP’s HANA Enterprise Cloud being delivered through IBM’s cloud, to an enterprise application partnership with Apple. You can read more about the Box and IBM deal here.