By Ericka Chickowski 1

Cloud storage and collaboration firm Box this week announced a landmark partnership with IBM designed to help integrate their products to create new service offerings and to further improve the quality assurance and security of Box’s offerings for business customers.

“This extensive alliance between Box and IBM opens up an exciting opportunity for both companies to reach new markets and deliver unified solutions and services that can redefine industries, advance secure collaboration and revolutionize enterprise mobility,” said Aaron Levie, co-founder and CEO of Box.

Creating a Cloud Security Powerhouse

On the security front, the partnership will allow Box to further solidify its enterprise security options by integrating directly with IBM security technologies for threat detection, anomaly identification, mobile device management and identity protection. This includes bringing Box customers the ability to fold in MaaS360, SSO/ID, QRadar and X-Force Threat Detection for better visibility and control over users and corporate data. Many of the capabilities will be included in the Box Trust program to offer customers extended enterprise security protection within Box’s ecosystem. Additionally, Box will enhance an existing integration for improved mobile device management by tightening the links between its content management capabilities and IBM Fiberlink.

The security element to the partnership is only a sliver of the announcement. The true value the firms are trying to add will be in improved analytics, social collaboration solutions and mobile apps and development tools. The integration with IBM’s enterprise content management will allow businesses to perform better analytics, which will also be facilitated with an integration with Box and Watson Analytics. Additionally, Big Blue will bring together IBM Verse and IBM Connections with Box for a comprehensive email and social collaboration platform.

The mobility play

On the mobile front, the firms are incorporating Box technology into select IBM MobileFirst for iOS apps and IBM is giving developers a way to integrate Box APIs on the IBM Bluemix developer cloud to stimulate creative ways to build Box offerings into custom apps.

“This partnership will transform the way work is done in industries and professions that shape our experience every day. The impact will be felt by experts and professionals in industries such as healthcare, financial services, law, and engineering who are overwhelmed by today’s digital data and seek better solutions to manage large volumes of information more intelligently and securely,” said Bob Picciano, senior vice president, IBM Analytics. The integration of IBM and Box technologies, combined with our global cloud capabilities and the ability to enrich content with analytics, will help unlock actionable insights for use across the enterprise.”

In one example of how this partnership could help joint customers, the firms pointed to healthcare providers and hospitals who could more easily share test results with patients securely, while still maintaining a formal review with the physicians and nurses coordinating care.