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Tag: Dropbox For Business

  • Dropbox Gets Enterprise Version, Partner Network & More

    Back in June, Dropbox announced that it had over 400 million users and that it is in use at over 8 million businesses with 100,000 actual Dropbox Business customers.

    The company kicked off its Dropbox Open event in San Francisco on Wednesday and provided an update on its numbers. Actually, it’s still claiming 400 million users and 8 million businesses. However, it’s now claiming 150,000 companies on Dropbox Business.

    Dropbox also introduced Dropbox Enterprise, the Dropbox Partner Network, and new Dropbox Platform capabilities.

    Dropbox Enterprise is a new tier of its business offering, which includes security, admin, and collaboration features fond in Dropbox Business with the addition of new deployment tools, advanced controls, and services and support for large organizations. The company runs down some benefits:

    Scalable deployment tools. Many companies already have strong Dropbox adoption from employees using personal accounts. With domain verification and account capture, admins can accelerate user migration to enterprise accounts in a few clicks.

    Increased visibility and control. With domain insights, admins gain visibility into any personal Dropbox usage taking place on their company domain. Additionally our new collaboration insights feature lets admins easily monitor how employees are using Dropbox with external collaborators.

    Enterprise-grade services and support. Customers have unlimited access to the Dropbox API to seamlessly integrate Dropbox with existing IT systems, plus access to our platform team for support on custom integrations. We’re also providing customers with an assigned customer manager and world-class services for help with deployment, data migration, and user training.

    The Dropbox Partner Network is for resellers and developers to connect with one another. Partners include Dell, HP, Adobe, Microsoft, and others.

    You can read about the new platform capabilities here.

    Earlier this week, Dropbox announced new partnerships with Vodafone, A1 Telekom, and Telemex to expand its offerings into more countries.

    Image via Dropbox

  • Dropbox for Business Gets File Requests Feature

    Last month, Dropbox launched a new feature for file requests so users can more easily collect files of any size from groups on any platform regardless of device. The feature is now available for Dropbox for Business users.

    “File requests are a fast and simple way to collect files from the people you work with,” a spokesperson for the company explains. “Just send one request to as many people as you like, either via email or by giving them a link. Then they can upload a file up to 10 GB in size each — even if they don’t have a Dropbox account — and it’ll go right into your Dropbox.”

    “And with file requests come key admin controls,” the said. “Admins can choose whether or not their team members can create file requests, and they can also view member-specific activity for sending and responding to file requests.”

    The company says file requests are perfect for teachers and professors who need a way to collect papers from students as well as assistants and coordinators who spend time gathering receipts and invoices. The feature is also good for real estate agents who gather hundreds of applications for new properties and event planners who request assets and contracts up until the day of the event, it says. These are just a few examples of course.

    Since first announcing file requests, Dropbox celebrated its 8th birthday and shared a bunch of stats. For one, it has surpassed 400 million registered users. It says users are taking Dropbox to work at over 8 million businesses, and that there are over 100,000 actual Dropbox for Business customers.

    According to the company, users sync 1.2 billion files every day, create over 100,000 new shared folders and links every hour, and make 4,000 edits every second.

    Image via Dropbox

  • Dropbox For Business Makes Life Easier For IT Teams

    Dropbox announced some updates to Dropbox for Business, which should make things a little easier for IT teams in the administration, security, and integration areas.

    For one, they’ve added tiered admin roles. There are three tiers: Team admin, User management admin, and support admin. The idea is that day-to-day responsibilities can be delegated by having different roles assigned to each admin.

    Team admins have the ability to set team-wide security and sharing permissions as well as create admins and manage members. They have all available admin permissions. This is the only tier that can set admins or change roles. There has to be at least one Team Admin on an account.

    User management admins can add and remove team members, manage groups, and view a team’s activity feed. Support admins can manage passwords and basic account security as well as create a team member activity log. They can also contact Dropbox support about restoring deleted files, helping team members locked out of two-step authentication, etc.

    You can get a deeper look at all of this here.

    Also new is an enterprise installer, which lets admins automate Dropbox for Business deployment remotely to any Windows desktop machine. You can learn more about running this here.

    Regarding security and API improvements, a post by Rob Baesman on the Dropbox for Business blog says:

    Security is always top of mind for us and our customers. Two of our newest additions continue to put the security of your company’s data at the forefront. Our recent ISO 27018 certification makes us one of the first cloud service providers to achieve the emerging global standard for user privacy and data protection. And admins can now more easily require two-step verification to better protect account access.

    To integrate Dropbox with your existing systems even further, we’re extending the Dropbox for Business API with new capabilities for shared folders. Several industry-leading data migration and DLP providers — including Adallom, CloudLock, Elastica, Mover, Netskope, and SkySync — have begun building integrations to help admins take advantage of this new functionality. “As organizations continue migrating to cloud apps like Dropbox to enable greater employee agility and productivity, IT needs to have visibility and control over content stored in the cloud to ensure the security of sensitive business data,” said Rick Holden, VP of business development and alliances, Netskope. “The new Dropbox shared folder API allows us to better integrate our two services, giving IT peace of mind and affording employees greater flexibility in how they do their jobs.”

    In addition to all of this, Dropbox announced the integration of Dropbox for Business with Active Directory with a new Active Directory Connector, which has been released in beta to select customers. We should be hearing more about that in the near future.

    Image via Dropbox

  • Dropbox Announces Dropbox For Business With Single Sign-On

    Dropbox announced “Dropbox for Business” on Wednesday. The company says that it’s making a lot of changes to make Dropbox better for companies of all sizes, so it’s rebranding “Dropbox For Teams” as “Dropbox For Business”.

    One of the upcoming features is single sign-on (SSO). Dropbox’s Anand Subramani explains:

    SSO works behind the scenes to let users sign in just once to a central identity provider, like Active Directory, and securely access all their business apps, like Dropbox. With SSO, companies can put their existing trusted identity provider in charge of the authentication process.

    For users, SSO means ease — one fewer password to remember and one fewer step to get to your work. Once logged in to your system, there’s no need to sign in to Dropbox separately. For IT admins, SSO means additional security and administrative management. Single sign-on gives you complete ownership of the authentication process and works with your company’s existing password policies. It also easily ties into the existing Dropbox provisioning and de-provisioning API to provide further Active Directory integration.

    The company is working with various identity providers on single sign-on. These include Ping Identity, Okta, OneLogin, Centrify, and Symplified. The feature is coming next month. It will take advantage of the industry standard Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML).

    Dropbox claims to be used by 2 million businesses and 95% of the Fortune 500.