Box Taps into Advanced Algorithms

At a BoxWorks 2017 conference, Box added a bevy of products and updates to its collaboration portfolio that promise to advance workflows by making it simpler to invoke multiple types and classes of machine learning algorithms.

Box made good on a promise to make advanced algorithms available to users by integrating external services based on machine learning algorithms developed by IBM, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google. Jon Fan, senior director of project management for Box, says those capabilities will make it possible to apply computer vision, video indexing, and sentiment analysis to content stored in the Box cloud service. Box also pledged to continually upgrade Box Graph to help organizations keep track of what services are available across the Box ecosystems and unveiled Box Skills Kit, a set of online resources that developers can employ to build applications and workflows incorporating advanced algorithms.

“These algorithms will bring a ton of innovation to the platform,” says Fan.

Box also expanded Box UI Elements with an Open With tool that allows a user to access a file in an application, open and modify it with another application, and save it back to the original application as well as tighter integration between Box and the Workplace by Facebook collaboration application delivered as a cloud service.

Finally, Box unveiled Box CLI, which allows users to interact with Box application programming interfaces (APIs) via a command line interface that eliminates the need to know how to code, and promised to embed more analytics applications in a Box Console that keeps track of events occurring across Box APIs.

As Box continues to evolve beyond being a simple content repository, organizations of all sizes are going to be able to create much more sophisticated workflows around the cloud service. The issue now will be making sure that whatever external service being accessed fits within whatever policy is defined by any applicable compliance requirement.