Dropbox to open UK office in effort to widen international business user base

Meanwhile, Edward Snowden suggests that Dropbox is 'hostile to privacy'

Cloud storage provider Dropbox is set to open an office in the UK as it looks to increase the number of subscribers paying for its business service.

That's according to Dropbox COO Dennis Woodside, who revealed plans for the firm to expand internationally in an interview with The Financial Times.

Dropbox is headquartered in San Francisco, with additional offices in Texas, New York and Sydney, Australia, but what's been dubbed as "embarking on a new phase of international expansion" will see the cloud storage firm open in the UK, continental Europe and even Japan.

The company is a US firm, but according to Woodside - a former Google executive who joined Dropbox earlier this year - about 70 per cent of its users are based outside of North America. The thinking behind opening a string of international offices is to directly sell Dropbox for Business to organisations outside the US.

Overall, Dropbox has around 300 million users, with Woodside claiming 80,000 of those are paying users of the Dropbox for Business service the firm launched last year.

Woodside also suggested that Dropbox could gain additional revenue from business users by offering "best of breed set of services for small businesses", adding: "Once we have billing relationships with lots of businesses, there's lots of things we can do with that."

The company will be looking to draw upon the millions of Dropbox users who are likely to already use the service for work, although perhaps not in an official capacity.

However, in attempting to gain new business Dropbox will need to counter recent comments made by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The former NSA intelligence analysts suggested the firm is "hostile to privacy" and a "wannabe PRISM partner," arguing that the firm's appointment of former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice - who the whistleblower described as "probably the most anti-privacy official you can imagine" - demonstrates it has no concern for users' privacy.

Dropbox rejected Snowden's claims in a statement, arguing "safeguarding our users' information is a top priority at Dropbox".