SAN FRANCISCO -- Dropbox is growing up.
During its Dropbox Open event in San Francisco on Wednesday, the company unveiled a new enterprise tier and a suite of new features for its big business users. Dropbox Enterprise, which is available now, joins Dropbox for Business and Dropbox Pro as the company's paid tiers.
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CEO Drew Houston described the new service as the company's "most powerful set of tools ever for our largest customers.” Unlike Dropbox's existing business offering, Dropbox for Business, Dropbox Enterprise is geared toward large organizations -- those with thousands of employees -- that require more fine-grained IT controls and other "advanced capabilities."
For example, it offers ways for IT administrators to monitor how people are using corporate Dropbox accounts and who they are sharing files with. Businesses also get access to Dropbox's API, so they can customize Dropbox to work on top of the software they are already using. The company also announced new features available to both Dropbox for Business and Enterprise users, like HIPAA compliance and new security tools.
Though many may associate Dropbox with its consumer-facing services, Houston and other executives spent much of Wednesday's event touting its business smarts. As the company eyes an IPO, it's increasingly important for Dropbox to differentiate itself from competitors like Box. Though Houston and others who took the stage didn't mention their rival by name, they made it clear they see themselves ahead of it.
Early in his keynote, Houston claimed Dropbox had added more business customers in the past 10 months than Box ever had. Box CEO Aaron Levie, known for his frank Twitter presence, wasted no time throwing shade of his own at Dropbox. Of the two companies, Box has historically been much more business and developer-focused with annual events for its developers and enterprise customers.
Any time you ever want to see what Dropbox will do next, look for what we did 3-5 years ago.— Aaron Levie (@levie) November 4, 2015
It's too soon to know how significant Dropbox's new business services will be for the company, or who will come out on top, but one thing is clear: The cloud wars are far from over.