Box Partners with AWS, IBM to Comply with Local Cloud Storage Laws

Box is getting more enterprise-friendly with the launch of Box Zones.

According to an announcement at Box World Tour Europe on Tuesday, Box Zones give enterprises the choice to store data regionally across Europe and Asia, which will address compliance concerns of data storage.

Box has partnered with AWS and IBM Cloud for content in Box to be stored in Germany, Ireland, Singapore and Japan. Complying with regional laws can get complicated so being able to host data within the respective countries where data is stored provides peace of mind to business customers. Box is used by more than 57,000 businesses for secure content management and collaboration.

“Businesses today are more connected, collaborative and global thanks to the power of the cloud,”  Aaron Levie, co-founder and CEO of Box said in a statement. “Yet for many companies, local laws and regulations have forced them to make technology tradeoffs that limit their success and place a drag on employee productivity and collaboration. Box Zones will help power digital transformation for enterprise customers across Europe and Asia and accelerate our international presence.”

By leveraging third-party infrastructure, Box is taking a different approach than its competitor Dropbox, who recently outlined its plan to migrate fully away from AWS. Box said it will continue to operate its own data centers in the US.

“Box Zones has been a key focus of our engineering team for the past couple of years, with the core goal of separating our application and service from how and where we store encrypted files,” Levie said in a blog post. “Box Zones, and its corresponding architecture affords us the flexibility to leverage both our own data centers and select cloud partners to accelerate our footprint in new geographies.”

Box Zones will be available in May for an additional fee, leveraging Amazon S3 on AWS Regions in Germany, Ireland, Japan and Singapore. The service is scheduled to be available via IBM Cloud in Europe and Asia.

“Security is the top priority for AWS and our customers. With the recent launch of Box KeySafe running on AWS, Box offers companies of all sizes greater control over their business-critical, sensitive content, and furthers that mission with today’s introduction of Box Zones,” Terry Wise, Vice President of Worldwide Partner Ecosystem, Amazon Web Services, Inc said in a statement. “We believe customers should have the freedom to choose where and how their data is stored. With Box Zones leveraging Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), customers can better meet the highest levels of security and regulatory compliance required in their respective geographies.”