Intralinks CEO labels Box 'consumer-grade platform', questions enterprise case for use

'We've had workflow for five years, they announced that it's in their roadmap,' Ronald Hovsepian tells Computing

President and CEO of Intralinks, Ronald Hovsepian, has described rival collaboration tools provider Box as a "consumer-grade player", arguing the firm is some way behind in terms of what it can offer the enterprise when compared with his organisation.

Intralinks customers include HSBC and McLaren Mercedes, clients that Hovsepian told Computing demonstrate that the New York-based secure collaboration tools firm is ahead of rivals including Box and Dropbox, which he said were designed for more consumers rather than enterprise users.

"Most of the other file share platforms don't have the content engines we have for enterprise sharing or our controls because they're trying to learn the market. Both of them [Dropbox and Box] are really consumer heritage platforms," he said.

Hovsepian pointed to recent announcements from Box about changes to its tools that he argued demonstrate how the firm is playing catch-up in the enterprise market.

"Aaron [Levie, CEO of Box] just highlighted the other day he's rebuilt his sync engine after four years because it's designed for consumers," he said.

"But that just shows they're down at the file sync and share level, they're not into the entire platform which is the content engine of controls, entitlements, provisioning and all those other pieces that are very, very important for the flow of the environment and the way you plan that workflow," he told Computing.

"We've had workflow for five years, they announced that it's in their roadmap. Okay great, but we've been doing that for five years. They didn't even talk about meta-tagging, which is a whole other issue; we self-tag,"

Hovsepian added that a lot needs to be considered if Box wants to "move up" from providing a "consumer grade" service.

"There's a lot of richness that has to go up when you move up into the enterprise out of being just a consumer-grade player, both from a security compliance and manageability perspective," he said.