Box Taps EMC Exec to Drive Platform Growth

Cloud storage platform Box (BOX) has brought Jeetu Patel on board as senior vice president of platform and chief strategy officer. Patel will report to Box co-founder and CEO Aaron Levie.

According to a statement released by the Los Altos, Calif.-based company on Wednesday, Patel will be responsible for Box’s platform business and developer relations. Box’s corporate development organization led by Villi Iltchev, SVP of corporate development, will report to Patel.

Patel joins Box from EMC where he most recently was general manager and chief executive of its Syncplicity business unit, EMC’s enterprise file sync and share solution. Prior to EMC, where Patel held various roles including CSO and CTO, he was president of Doculabs, a research and consulting firm based in Chicago.

Like other cloud storage platforms, Box has recognized the growth potential of enterprises requiring mass amounts of cloud storage that is easy to use. In response to this, Box announced its Developer Edition in April at its Box Dev conference. According to a report by ComputerWorld, the developer edition allows enterprises to build applications on top of its capabilities without using the Box UI or requiring users to have a Box account. Patel will be part of driving growth the platform’s growth, Levie said.

“The Box platform is the next great growth driver for Box,” said Aaron Levie, co-founder and CEO of Box. “Jeetu’s deep industry and operating experience in enterprise content management and collaboration makes him an ideal leader as Box takes the next step to extend the scope of our platform business.”

According to Box, its platform ecosystem has grown to nearly 50,000 developers and its platform serves more than 4.5 billion third-party API calls per month.

Adding Patel is not the only change to the company’s C-suite as of late. At the end of July, Box named former CIO of HP Software Paul Chapman chief information officer.