Box is integrating its tools with Microsoft's workplace chat app, as the file-sharing company is seeing 'record usage' amid the coronavirus remote-work surge

• Box has been seeing record levels of usage of its product as more companies work from home amid the coronavirus outbreak.
• It's offered free trials for small and medium businesses and lifted user limits for its customers to help them accommodate to shifting to an all-remote workforce, CEO Aaron Levie said.
• It's also releasing a new set of integrations with Microsoft's cloud software products, including one with Microsoft workplace chat app Teams.
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As more companies turn to remote work amid the coronavirus outbreak and rely on cloud software tools to stay connected and productive, Box is trying to make sure companies are getting the best options it can offer.

And it's seeing lots of interest, presumably from newly remote workers, Box CEO Aaron Levie said.

"We've been steadily seeing - each day, pretty much - new levels of record usage of the product...we are seeing increases in how companies are collaborating and uploading and sharing their data," Levie told Business Insider.

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Box said it's tried its best to help customers dealing with this rapid shift to remote work. It's made its enterprise product free for 90 days for small and medium businesses and its letting existing customers add users for no cost beyond any user limits they might have had on their plan.

Its customers also use Box in tandem with other cloud software services - and being able to connect Box's file sharing service to other applications businesses is crucial.

In order to make that easier for customers, Box is expanding its partnership with Microsoft to provide deeper integrations with many of Microsoft's cloud software services, including Teams, Outlook and security features.

"Especially right now, I think in a very pronounced way, you have a lot of enterprises that are very quickly trying to respond to new ways of working and moving more of their operations to the cloud, and our job is to make sure that we're integrated with all of the technology that they're using and all the major platforms that they're leveraging," Levie said.

He added that obviously Microsoft was obviously one of the services most of their customers were using in tandem with Box.

With the new integrations, users can share files from Box directly in Teams. It also includes an updated Box add-on for Outlook. It's notable that Box also has integrations with Microsoft Teams competitor Slack, and just announced updates to that partnership last week.

Levie said he sees Box's role as a neutral third party, whose job is to be connected to all the applications its customers may want to use alongside Box - that includes Microsoft and Slack and other tools like Salesforce and Google's GSuite.

"The way that we see our role in the market is we want to be the best way to manage corporate files and corporate data. And then we want to make sure that our customers can get access to those files from any application that they're leveraging," Levie said.

Levie said as they're releasing these new integrations they're trying to provide value to businesses that may be rapidly shifting to an all-remote workforce amid the coronavirus outbreak and need cloud software to communicate with colleagues.

That said, Levie thinks it's too early to tell how that will translate into more business growth in the future. It's similar to what fellow cloud software CEOs like Eric Yuan at Zoom and Stewart Butterfield at Slack are thinking.

The new integration with Microsoft Teams will be available on March 31.

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