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Palo Alto, CA (PRWEB) July 8, 2010

Cloud content management provider Box.net today announced that it achieved record growth and momentum in the first half of 2010 as businesses continue to adopt Box to share, collaborate and manage business content online. The company achieved several major milestones during this period, including strategic integrations with Google Apps and NetSuite, M in Series C financing, SAS70 certification, and 3X business revenue growth over the first half of 2009, driven by deals with large enterprises such as Coca Cola and Audi.

“Box is experiencing tremendous growth as innovative IT leaders look to cloud content management to address massive information and collaboration challenges that aren’t being solved by legacy solutions,” said Aaron Levie, co-founder and CEO of Box. “While we’ve traditionally seen consistent traction among small and medium businesses, 2010 has brought a major spike in adoption of Box by large enterprises looking to replace or supplement on-premise systems like SharePoint with a more agile, user friendly solution. We think that a cloud-based approach to content management and collaboration is incredibly powerful, and we’ll continue to invest in the partnerships and platform enhancements that are driving adoption across businesses of all sizes.”

Revenue Growth and Investment

Box achieved record business revenue in consecutive quarters, as enterprise revenue in the first half of 2010 tripled that of H1 2009. The company also secured M in Series C Financing led by Scale Venture Partners, bringing the company’s total venture funding to .5M since its launch in 2005.

Customers

Major enterprises such as Panasonic and Nokia Siemens Networks joined the more than 4 million users and companies ranging from small businesses to Fortune 500 companies that use Box to share, collaborate and manage content online. Other significant deployments in 2010 include DIRECTV, Discovery Networks, Meebo, the Oprah Winfrey Network, Coca Cola, Audi, Whiting-Turner Contracting, Columbia University, Ohio State University and Volvo.

Partner and Mobile Strategy

In the first half of 2010, Box made major additions to its OpenBox platform through strategic integrations with Google Apps, SAP StreamWork, NetSuite, SugarCRM, DocuSign, and others. Customers use Box as a central hub for all business content, which can then be extended seamlessly to these best-of-breed business applications, as well as mobile devices. The Box app for iPad was one of the first business applications customized for the iPad; the company also released v2 of its iPhone application, a Blackberry application, and integrated with the QuickOffice Connect Mobile Suite for iPhone, iPad and Android.

Product Enhancements

Box continued to reinvent how users engage with content on its platform in 2010, as well as enhancing security through SAS70 certification. The company launched integrated content viewing as a result of its acquisition of Increo Solutions in 2009, making it easy for users to view all file types directly within Box without the need for corresponding software, and also embed files anywhere on the Web. Box also released Box Sync for businesses, connecting users’ desktops to cloud content management and helping organizations break down information silos and extract more value from content previously locked in the desktop environment. Users can also upload content seamlessly to Box with the new drag and drop functionality, powered by the latest HTML5 web-standard.

“More than 1.5 million files are shared daily on Box, with 1.5 billion shared to date,” said Aaron Levie. “This number is going to explode as larger enterprises continue to deploy Box and businesses of all sizes cope with unprecedented quantities of information that need to be centralized and managed in real-time. We’ll continue to invest aggressively and strategically in building a cloud content management solution that addresses the content and collaboration challenges faced by enterprises today, as well as those they’ll face in the future.”

For more information, please visit www.box.net. .

About Box.net

Founded in 2005, Box provides cloud content management for more than 4 million users and companies ranging from small businesses to Fortune 500 companies. Box’s dynamic, flexible content management and collaboration solution empowers users to access and share content online, and gives IT professionals unprecedented visibility into how content moves within their organizations and beyond. Content on Box can be shared internally and externally, accessed through iPad, iPhone and Blackberry applications, and extended to OpenBox partner applications such as Google Apps, Netsuite and salesforce.com. Headquartered in Palo Alto, CA, Box is a privately held company and is backed by venture capital firms Draper Fisher Jurvetson, ScaleVP and U.S. Venture Partners.

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Sacramento, CA (PRWEB) March 19, 2008

On March 12th Bill Gates appeared before Congress calling for an increase in what he deemed the “arbitrarily set base cap of 65,000 H-1B visas.” By March 14th, without soliciting comments from the U.S. workers who are impacted by the H-1b program, Congress introduced two bills that would double or triple the H-1b base cap:

a) The “Innovation Employment Act,” (H.R.5630) introduced by Representative Gabrielle Giffords, D-Arizona, would increase the cap in H-1B visas from 65,000 a year to 130,000 a year. ((202) 225-2542)

b) Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Virginia, introduced the “Strengthening United States Technology and Innovation Now” (SUSTAIN) Act (H.R.5642) that would increase the H-1b cap to 195,000. (202.225-2815) also sponsored by Sen. Lamar Smith, R-Texas ((202) 225-4236)

“Neither of these bills provide meaningful protections for U.S. workers,” according to Kim Berry of the Programmers Guild.

During his March 12th testimony Gates lamented that, due to the “USCIS H-1b Lottery” in April 2007, “Microsoft was unable to obtain H-1B visas for one-third of the highly qualified foreign-born job candidates that we wanted to hire.” On March 16, 2006 Gates had told the Washington Post that salaries for H-1b jobs at Microsoft start at about US 0,000 a year.

In a recent letter Compete America chairman Robert Hoffman also opposed the H-1b lottery, writing: “As was the case last year, not only is the annual supply of H-1B visas virtually assured to be exhausted on the very first day applications are accepted, half of those applying will lose out in the visa lottery, denying U.S. employers access to tens of thousands of highly skilled and badly needed professionals who could contribute to economic growth and job creation in this country.”

In this instance the Programmers Guild agrees with Bill Gates and Robert Hoffman: The H-1b lottery is not serving the interests of U.S. employers. In FY 2007 the lottery awarded over 4500 H-1b visas to Indian outsourcing firm “Infosys Technologies Limited,” while denying a few hundred of Microsoft’s applications.

Accordingly, Kim Berry of the Programmers Guild advocates that USCIS apply two criteria in determining which H-1b visas to approve in the April 2008 filings:

1) SKILL: H-1b workers with the highest skills should be given priority. In no case should a “PhD genetic researcher” lose out to a “/hour accountant.” “The best proxy for skill is salary. If H-1b were granted with a preference for salary, every 0,000 H-1b that Bill Gates filed would get approved,” according to Berry. “Any business with a critical need for an H-1b candidate could be assured of approval by paying a higher wage. Since the median H-1b salary is about ,000, any H-1b paying more than about ,000 would be approved. We are not aware of any statute that mandates that USCIS use lottery versus some other selection criteria when over 65,000 applications are received on the first day.”

2) NATIONAL BENEFIT: Bill Gates specifically addressed “H-1b visas available to U.S. companies,” stating that “Microsoft has found that for every H-1B hire we make, we add on average four additional employees to support them in various capacities.” This is certainly not true when H-1b are granted to Indian consulting firms. According to Ron Hira, “(Outsourcing) firms hire almost no Americans and their entire business model rests on shifting as many American jobs overseas as fast as possible.” The Programmers Guild agrees that any use of H-1b should serve the broad U.S. national interest. “U.S. firms that will create U.S. jobs should have preference for U.S. H-1b visas,” according to Kim Berry.

In his testimony Gates stated “If we increase the number of H-1B visas that are available to U.S. companies, employment of U.S. nationals would likely grow as well.” The Programmers Guild disputes this. “Gates did not address that eight of the top ten users of H-1b are not U.S. companies – they are foreign consulting firms that undermine U.S. consulting firms and displace U.S. nationals from the employment rolls,” according to Berry.

Before Congress considers increasing the H-1b cap based upon the testimony of Bill Gates, U.S. tech workers should be granted equal time. “U.S. Citizens should have an equal voice in Congress as multi-national corporations,” states Kim Berry, president of the Programmers Guild. “There are many highly skilled American tech workers being overlooked because they do not have the precise skill experience cited in job ads – and because Microsoft and others only considers new graduates for entry-level positions.”

If any Congressman is unaware of the harm that H-1b is causing, Berry recommends that they review the “H-1b Harm Report” at www.HireAmericansFirst.org, where hundreds of U.S. tech workers have detailed their personal experiences.

ABOUT US

The Programmers Guild advocates for the interests of U.S. computer programmers and other tech workers. See www.programmersguild.org for more information.

REFERENCES

Pending bills to increase H-1b cap

www.inrich.com/cva/ric/news/politics.apx.-content-articles-RTD-2008-03-16-0116.html

http://tinyurl.com/2khrdx

Gates “Salaries for H-1b jobs at Microsoft start at about US0,000 a year”

www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;1770888992

In a recent letter Compete America chairman Robert Hoffman also opposed the H-1b lottery

www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2008/03/spring_is_in_th.html

4500 H-1b visas to Indian outsourcing firm “Infosys Technologies Limited”

www.computerworld.com/pdfs/editorial/h1b.pdf

Ron Hira statement

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/10/AR2008031002456.html

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