Box closed out 2011 with a three times year-over-year increase in revenue from enterprise customers, the consumer turned enterprise-focused cloud storage, collaboration and content sharing up-and-comer revealed this week.
Box's push to the cloud comes as its chief rivals, including Dropbox and a host of other cloud storage players continue to look for ways to entice enterprise users to their offerings.
Six-year-old Box's enterprise momentum is in part due to its increasingly large customer base, which in 2011 saw 100,000 businesses and 82 percent of Fortune 500 companies using Box cloud storage offerings, including major players like AAA, Dow Chemical, McAfee, Proctor & Gamble and Red Bull.
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Box, formerly known as Box.net, finished 2011 with more than 8 million users and doubled its enterprise customer base. Additionally, the company closed $129 million in funding last year, dollars the company will leverage heavily to build out its enterprise expansion. Box also boosted its headcount, adding 215 new employees in 2011, which brings its total team to 340.
"As we head into 2012, organizations are embracing the cloud from the bottom up and the top down," Aaron Levie, co-founder and CEO of Box, said in a statement. "CIOs of the world's largest companies are bypassing their traditional vendors in favor of enterprise cloud startups that are better positioned to meet the demands of today's and tomorrow's workers. This shift will transform the enterprise software landscape, establishing a new set of technology leaders and an entirely new way of working that's more flexible, mobile and social than ever before."
Along with tripling enterprise revenue from 2010 to 2011, Box also saw deeper penetration across major verticals, with a 370 percent increase in the number of retail customers, a 265 percent increase in the financial sector and a 300 percent increase in healthcare customers from 2010 to 2011.
That rapid enterprise growth comes on the heels of Box launching its first official channel program in July.
Box also added a host of new technology partnerships in 2011, offering free Box cloud storage accounts on certain HP desktops and giving buyers of LG Android device buyers free Box accounts.
Meanwhile, Box launched a host of new product offerings to bring in enterprise users. In November the company launched the Box Innovation Network and pledged $2 million to bring developers onto the new platform. Box also launched a host of new syncing capabilities and finished 2011 with the launch of enhancements that tighten IT control, security and mobile management.
