Published on the 17/11/2016 | Written by Anthony Caruana

Dropbox is probably the most popular file synchronisation service on the planet with 500 million users including half of all the internet users in Australia and New Zealand…

But that consumer foundation, largely fueled by a free product offering that has seen features eroded over the years, is now giving way to a forward-looking business with eyes fixed on the enterprise. Today, over 200,000 customers are paying for Dropbox for Business.

Regional MD Charlie Wood said the company has a focus on delivering better administration tools to ease the transition for those wanting to use Dropbox accounts at work, a shift away from AWS to its own data centres, and new collaboration-focused tools such as its Paper.

At the heart of this is “A ruthless focus on catering for the user experience and the simplicity and ease of use combined with speed and reliability,” said Daniel Iversen, Dropbox’s head of solution architecture for APAC.

That’s not just about file synchronisation. It includes an administrative toolkit, dubbed AdminX which Iverson said is designed for ‘ordinary users’ (as opposed to tech-heads).  He said AdminX adds visibility and control features mainly focused on supporting companies on large-scale Dropbox deployments and improved management for the company’s new collaboration tool, Dropbox Paper.

Iverson described Paper as a “canvas” teams can use to create and share content easily; he said it reflects the changing workplace where traditional office tools such as word processors and email no longer fit with changing workplace practices. However, he added that Paper is not aiming to directly compete with the likes of Office 365 or Google Docs. Rather, it is a complementary product and it can be managed using the AdminX tools.

He drew attention to Dropbox Control, a tool which allows network administrators to restrict access to personal Dropbox services while supporting Dropbox for Business. With data leakage a potentially significant issue for companies, this heralds Dropbox’s entry into the Data Loss Prevention (DLP) game. This works in conjunction with company proxy servers; or large companies, there is also sub-domain verification. When users have created private Dropbox accounts using their business email address, a process will validate that the email address is valid and automatically integrate that account into the company’s Dropbox for Business service. Iverson said this has been tested by one of the “big four consultancies” in Australia and is used by News Corp.

Iverson also told us about Device Approvals.

“Device approvals go hand in hand with MDM [mobile device management] solutions where it allows the company to configure risk profile according to the devices that can be connected to their Dropbox account. Administrators can go straight into console and say how many mobile devices and how many desktop devices each employee is allowed to have on Dropbox,” he explained.

Audit logs have also been given some attention with the ability for administrators to look, in greater detail, at who has accessed files and downloaded them directly from the admin US, Iverson added. This assists with better development of DLP policies.

Over recent months, Dropbox has expanded its core infrastructure with local points of presence around the world. Iverson said this has been happening quietly over recent months, with the official announcement of a local presence with a data centre in Sydney.

However, this new point of presence does not actually store any data, said Iverson. It is a proxy server that optimises the performance between clients and the Dropbox network.