Box creates Zones; allows you to choose data centers

Cloud company, Box, has tied up with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and IBM Cloud to create Box Zones, giving enterprises the choice to store data regionally across Europe and Asia. The service will allow content in Box to be stored in Germany, Ireland, Singapore and Japan based on customer needs. The move will help circumvent regulations in certain sectors — say for example, finance — which do not allow data to be stored outside the country. “Businesses today are more connected, collaborative and global thanks to the power of the cloud,” said Aaron Levie, Co-founder and CEO, Box.

“Yet for many companies, local laws and regulations have forced them to make technology tradeoffs that limit their success and place a drag on employee productivity and collaboration. Box Zones will help power digital transformation for enterprise customers across Europe and Asia and accelerate our international presence.”

Terry Wise, Vice President, Worldwide Partner Ecosystem, Amazon Web Services, added, “We believe customers should have the freedom to choose where and how their data is stored. With Box Zones leveraging Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), customers can better meet the highest levels of security and regulatory compliance required in their respective geographies.” The cloud company claims that more than 57,000 businesses, including 59% of the Fortune 500 rely on its service for “secure content management and collaboration.” It announced last month, that its revenues for fiscal year 2016, stood at $302.7 million, an increase of 40% from $216.4 million in fiscal year 2015. It is expecting revenues to swell in the range of $390 million to $394 million in fiscal 2017. Box Zones is scheduled to be available next month for an additional fee and leverages Amazon S3 on AWS Regions in Germany, Ireland, Japan and Singapore. Meanwhile, IBM Cloud data centers will be available later this year in Europe and Asia — of course for an additional fee. The company lately introduced Box KeySafe, a new software-based solution that allows customers to easily manage their own encryption keys in the cloud.