TMCnet News

Box Builds on Architecture, Engineering and Construction Cloud Adoption With New Integrations
[February 14, 2013]

Box Builds on Architecture, Engineering and Construction Cloud Adoption With New Integrations


(Marketwire Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) LOS ALTOS, CA -- (Marketwire) -- 02/14/13 -- Box today announced a new technology partner and preferred Box OneCloud apps to better serve customers in architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) services. The new integration with Gehry Technologies' GTeam cloud-based BIM collaboration service, together with the company's extensive mobile ecosystem, will make it easier for Box's growing AEC customer base to securely access, manage and share critical information like blueprints, CAD files and contracts in the field. Sales in this segment more than doubled over the course of 2012.



"Construction professionals are constantly challenged to deliver successful projects due to tight budgets, short timelines, geographically dispersed teams and difficulty in accessing information," said Whitney Bouck, general manager of enterprise at Box. "By integrating Box's cloud content platform with leading construction and engineering apps, our customers will be able to centralize project information to make it more readily available to employees and contractors, yielding greater productivity and more efficient operations." According to survey findings in the 2012 Construction Industry Hiring and Business Outlook from the AGC (Associated General Contractors of America), one out of every four construction firms indicate they plan to switch financial, job cost, or operational software to the cloud this year.

In the past year, Box's sales in the AEC services grew by 103 percent, as leading organizations such as Braemore Properties, CORE Construction, C.W. Driver, Dunn Building Company, Hopkins Architects, Intergraph, Layton Construction, Lennar Corporation, The Weitz Company and Webcor Builders joined the 150,000 businesses that use Box to share, manage and collaborate on content in the cloud.


"We needed a secure and scalable tool that would allow us to centralize all our content across the US and Europe and provide access to our information on any device," said Patrick Holcomb, executive VP, global business development at Intergraph. "Box gives us this ability -- significantly improving communication and collaboration across all our teams worldwide." Box and Gehry Technology's GTeam IntegrationBox is announcing a new partnership and integration with Gehry Technologies to improve process transparency and project team collaboration around 3D Building Information Modeling (BIM). Despite significant investment by AEC companies, BIM has failed to achieve anticipated impact in the AEC industry because collaboration is challenging, data exchange is difficult and relevant data is not easily accessible by users.

With this new integration, everyone from project owners and architects to contractors and sub-contractors can interact with their BIM 3D models directly within Box. Users can also work on the same project at the same time, regardless of platform and without need to access native BIM 3D authoring tools, removing uncertainty and reducing the variation of change.

"By integrating GTeam's BIM visualization and data management directly into Box, we expect to significantly expand the industry's access to BIM data, increasing the proliferation of projects using BIM and continuing the AEC industry's progress toward more efficient building design, construction and operations through BIM," said Dennis Shelden, CTO of Gehry Technologies. "Today's announcement is a significant step forward for our approach to connecting critical project information sources with GTeam to improve overall project information access and collaboration." Box OneCloud apps for AECBox AEC customers are making good use of Box OneCloud, the first mobile cloud for the enterprise, and leverage a number of mobile productivity app partners to create more accurate and efficient workflows. The four Box OneCloud apps used the most by construction firms to easily view and organize construction plans and top team discussion items, see drawing revisions and pin photos to blueprints, include: AutoCAD WS: enables users to view, edit, and share AutoCAD® drawings with anyone, anywhere using a mobile device PlanGrid: the simplest way to manage blueprints, project plans, specs and photos on an iPad PunchList: enables AEC professionals to create a report of issues or discussion items for any project FotoIn: embeds comments and collected form information from the field straight into photos Procore: provides a centralized project portal to track and manage construction project information "With Box, Webcor employees along with the architects, engineers, and subcontractors have instant access to the most up-to-date construction content no matter where they are," said Vince Sarubbi, chief technology officer at Webcor Builders. "We're able to edit and manage blueprints on the construction site, in a meeting, or in the office using the Box iPad app integration with PlanGrid. Box allows our teams to be more productive and efficient while provide virtually real-time document collaboration." Availability The Gehry Technologies integration is available to customers today. To find out on how to start using Box with Gehry Technologies, please visit http://www.gehrytech.com/Gteam/Box. The preferred OneCloud apps for AEC are accessible via the Box Apps Marketplace. For more information on today's announcement, please visit the Box blog.

To learn more about Box for AEC, please visit https://www.box.com/construct and register for the Box construction and engineering webinar on March 28th.

See when the Box World Tour is coming to your area at http://www.boxworldtour.com.

About BoxFounded in 2005, Box provides a secure content sharing platform that both users and IT love and adopt. Content on Box can be shared internally and externally, accessed through iPad, iPhone, Android and Windows Phone applications, among others, and extended to partner applications such as Google Apps, NetSuite and Salesforce. Headquartered in Los Altos, CA, Box is a privately held company and is backed by venture capital firms Andreessen Horowitz, Bessemer Venture Partners, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Emergence Capital Partners, General Atlantic, Meritech Capital Partners, NEA, Scale Venture Partners, and U.S. Venture Partners, and strategic investors salesforce.com and SAP. To learn more about Box, visit www.box.com.

Source: Box

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