Dropbox is a service that provides cloud storage for its users. Aiming to be more than just that, the company has released new products to enhance the already popular service.
Existing as a freemium model, Dropbox gained popularity with its straightforward tools. Going up against other giants like Microsoft and Google, the company is having quite a pressure to expand despite its popularity. For that reason, and also to make it go beyond than just cloud storage.
On January 30th, 2017, the company is releasing two new products that are aimed for its business users.
The first is the collaborative editing software called Paper. The product allows teams to work on multiple shared documents, editing and passing notes to each other to refine ideas and files into a final form.
The second product is Smart Sync which is essentially an office suite tool that allows users to access files stored in their Dropbox account automatically without having them to store the files locally on their desktop.
Paper, The Collaborative Tool
Paper has been in the works at Dropbox for quite a while. The project began in October 2015 entering beta phase in August 2016.
What it does is resembling Google's suite of workplace cloud apps with its minimal document editor and writing tool. By releasing Paper, all other Dropbox's services and features are now plugged into the augmented experience.
Paper is Dropbox's attempt to compete against Microsoft and Google in terms of reaching business users. Its intention is to replace the common Microsoft Word and Google Docs as a favorable choice by users to write notes, share business plans, and comment on each other’s financial spreadsheets.
At the very least, Dropbox wants to encourage companies to pay for Dropbox services on top of what they already use.
It's also part of Dropbox's ongoing shift away from consumer storage and apps, towards enterprise software. The company has been spending more of its resources into Paper and other projects that make its mobile apps and website a place to perform work, instead of a platform to just store files - it's like the transformative product Dropbox wants to be.
There are already many paying businesses that use Office 365 and Google's G Suite. With Paper, Dropbox wants a share of the pie.
Knowing that Paper is competing with more established giants that are already popular, Dropbox doesn't want Paper to alienate users. For that reason, Paper allows users to import, edit, and collaborate on a number of other file types from Google, Microsoft, and others.
"We fully expect Paper to be used in environments where people are using Microsoft and Google products," said Rob Baesman, Dropbox's head of product. "That's the rule, not the exception."
It's also its way to unify modern workflow, as Baesman described it as "one part online document, one part collaboration, one part task management tool, one part content hub."
Smart Sync: Dealing With Multiple Large Files
Previously dubbed Dropbox Infinite, it's a feature that turns the entire Dropbox account into accessible folders on the desktop file system on Macs or PCs. With Smart Sync, Dropbox is trying to ensure users can perform all sorts of work without having to jump back and forth to a browser window.
Smart Sync was build upon a prior feature that allows users to store Dropbox folder in their toolbar and file system. Smart Sync added automatic synchronizing to make the experience faster by eliminating storage requirements for the physical hard drive.
For users, small files won't be much of a problem, but large files can be overwhelming to manage. Here is where Smart Sync plays its role. Dropbox business users can share and access files without having to download files on their desktop.
The idea to create Smart Sync is to deal with businesses that have many large files. Managing them back and forth can quickly eat the users' local computers. With Smart Sync, files on Dropbox will behave like they would normally on desktops.
Using Smart Sync, files are synchronized, opened, and after editing, they are delivered back up to the cloud.
"Everything users need for whole team or company is right from desktop system," said Genevieve Sheehan, Dropbox's group product manager. "Users have a ton of information, all of which they don't need to keep on their device but need to have access into all of it. They can quickly get wherever they need without having to bounce across to web apps, it’s all where they expect it to be. This gives teams simplified teamwork more power, and less overhead."
Sheehan stressed out that an important part of Smart Sync is to ensure that team members across businesses could collaborate across multiple different environments. This way, a user using Windows can access and manage a file, and synchronize and show up exactly as they might expect on a Mac.
For security reasons, Smart Sync uses available kernel extensions and has been thoroughly vetted for security, added Sheehan.
Conclusion
By releasing Paper and Smart Sync, Dropbox can go beyond plain cloud storage. With them, it can better embrace business consumers by providing the tools they need to ease workflow. However, the products are caught in Dropbox's business model. The company is existing in two worlds: freemium and modern business-centered pricing tiers.
But looking at the bigger picture, it's clear that Dropbox intends to be much more than just a digital storage company. And the two products can help Dropbox sees a more possible future, especially when founder and CEO Drew Houston stated that the company is running at a $1 billion revenue.
Dropbox is surrounded by competition when it comes to the areas of enterprise software and collaboration. This would essentially give Dropbox an advantage to compete with a larger market that is already occupied by giants like Microsoft and Google. Dropbox is coming up against platforms such as Slack, Evernote and Atlassian.