Today’s announcement represents a further maturing of that product and an attempt to use partnerships and more advanced administrative features to make the product more attractive to IT - and to give them the tools to control and manage Dropbox usage in the company.

Hard to blame them for wanting to find easier ways to get their work done in an increasingly mobile world.ĭropbox saw a business opportunity and launched Dropbox Business. Employees, on the other hand, were just looking for a quick way to access their files when they weren’t in the office. They didn’t appreciate employees using their private accounts to share company business. Most IT departments saw the consumer Dropbox product as a problem when it came to security. It was precisely that consumer popularity that Dropbox was hoping to exploit when it launched the business product - but it faced an inherent quandary. Today it has 500 million users, of which 200,000 are business customers.

When Dropbox launched its business version in 2014, it had 275 million consumer users. Rob Baesman, Dropbox’s head of product for pro, business and enterprise versions, says the idea behind the admin tool update is to provide a measure of control, while allowing companies to mix in some of the security tools they’re already using, all with the same ease of use that Dropbox users are used to getting from the consumer tools. Dropbox is getting much more serious about its Dropbox Business product, and today it announced a partnership with security vendor Symantec as part of a broader update to its business products designed to make it more attractive to larger businesses.

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