One month after closing an $81m funding round, US-based content sharing platform Box.net has launched the Box Innovation Network (/bin), a corporate venturing programme designed to promote innovation in enterprise software.
The network will operate by allowing member developers, such as cloud-based e-mail archivist LiveOffice and mobile visitor information app NousGuide, to collaborate with larger partners, including enterprise messaging company Twilio, mobile application platform Appcelerator and web hosting firm Rackspace, in order to deliver business software.
Box launched the network on Thursday, making a $2m investment that will be used for equity funding, intellectual property acquisitions and its own co-development of products with /bin members.
Aaron Levie, chief executive officer of Box, said: "Slow-moving enterprise software giants have produced very little innovation in recent years, and their closed ecosystems have made it all but impossible for outside players to create compelling experiences for customers on legacy systems. We’re changing all of that – and we’re doing so in ways that platforms like Microsoft simply cannot – by creating an open ecosystem of leading partners to enable developers to build and deploy Box applications instantly and on any platform."