Dropbox reinvents itself and attacks Microsoft and Google
The cloud is eating its children, and Dropbox is reinventing itself. The simple storage service is to become a complex digital desk for efficient work on the web.
Stock market newcomer Dropbox wants to become the indispensable digital desk in the company. Once launched as a simple storage service in the cloud, the service presented in San Francisco on Tuesday is set to become an innovative replacement for expensive office packages. The start-up is thus directly attacking the software giant Microsoft, but also the Internet company Google.
According to the promise of Dropbox managers, in the future half of the working day should no longer be lost in finding required files, Excel spreadsheets or presentations and information in any archives or folders in cloud storage, on hard drives or SD cards, sharing them with correct recipients via e-mail, messenger or chat service and then checking whether the work has also been done.
At the same time, Dropbox wants to help keep track of the various communication channels so you don't just miss something important when your boss has shared something via Slack or instructed via Skype. "The inundation of cloud files and various work apps can make daily work seem like trying not to get lost," says IDC analyst Marci Maddox, summing up the daily lives of many office workers.
"Work is becoming more dispersed," says Drew Houston, CEO and co-founder of Dropbox, as well. "We're working with apps that don't communicate with each other." An employee or digital worker today juggles about 35 apps per day, according to one study. That's where the new collection desktop comes in. The messenger Slack and the video conferencing service Zoom, for example, are integrated; both can be activated with just a few clicks and automatically used with the people in the contact directory.
Dropbox has also agreed on a collaboration with the project management start-up Atlassian, which should be up and running in a few months. Complex projects can then be planned, created, executed and monitored from scratch from Dropbox. The Dropbox desktop app, which can currently be downloaded in a pre-release version, is being completely overhauled. Files grouped in folders can now be pinned in a particularly visible way so that important information is seen immediately. Comments in a Word file appear at the "desktop edge" without having to open the file. In case of doubt, it is also possible to reply immediately without opening the file.
Dropbox is trying to escape the arbitrariness trap with this new approach: Dropbox faces the problem that the company's services are built on platforms that cannot be controlled by Dropbox itself. Storing data in the cloud is based on the infrastructure of Microsoft, Google or Amazon. However, storing data in the cloud is only one small feature among many for the large corporations. The young start-ups like Dropbox or Box.com are playing a game here that they can never win against the Goliaths of the industry.
That's why they try to set themselves apart with as much of their own work as possible. Box.com, for example, specializes in artificial intelligence and machine learning, with which they want to make their customers' endless data pools more valuable and useful, and thus make themselves irreplaceable.
Dropbox now wants to bring itself into play as an indispensable integrator between countless basic apps and end customers in everyday work. This is not without danger. The bottom line is that the young company is simply messing with Google Docs, even though it is now integrated into Dropbox. Dropbox is also competing against Microsoft and its newly designed Office 365, including the "Teams" chat service, or against platforms like those of sales giant Salesforce.
Dropbox manager Houston faces a big challenge: His company needs to find a sustainable path for growth and profitability. In the first quarter of 2019, the net loss was still $7.7 million despite high growth. The share price has been on a wild roller coaster ride and, after briefly soaring, is back to virtually where it was when it was first listed. A firm foothold in the corporate sector would be a guarantee for rising sales - if free Dropbox accounts are increasingly converted into paid business accounts. (SDA)
More on the subject: Blog.dropbox.com
