Box launches new free self-service cloud migration tool

3 years ago 474

Businesses moving less than 10TB that meet certain other conditions can take advantage of Box Shuttle to move data from on-premise systems to its cloud services without cost, but others may still have to pay.

Cloud hosting company Box has announced a new self-service cloud migration service that, for many small and midsized businesses, will be completely free.

The new Box Shuttle self-service migration tools are an extension of Box's full-service migration tool called Box Shuttle, which launched in February 2021. Shuttle's key feature is its ability to migrate content from on-premise legacy systems and other cloud platforms while maintaining permissions, metadata, version history, and other essential surrounding data. Those features are a fundamental part of the self-service Shuttle tools as well.

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According to Tamar Bercovici, VP of engineering at Box, migration services are becoming an essential part of digital transformation initiatives. "We've reached a point where organizations cannot afford to have silos of content strewn across legacy systems — especially in a hybrid environment where work needs to be secure anywhere, on any app, and across any device. Migration projects can be a massive strain on teams, not to mention a financial burden," Bercovici said.

Able to take data from a variety of source systems, Box Shuttle self-service tools are available in two tiers: An advanced tooling level that costs $500 per terabyte, and the free tier, which is limited to 10TB of data and has a few other requirements:

Data must be coming from a network file share, FTP, OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox or SharePoint Online,
Only requires permissions remapping at the user level,
Metadata must be "simple," meaning it is limited to file and folder names, size and created/modified dates.

Organizations that fall outside of any of those requirements should use the advanced tooling, which adds several other capabilities:

Additional data sources include SharePoint On-Premises, Citrix Sharefile, Egnyte, AWS, GCP and Azure,
Folder-level permissions remapping,
Custom metadata migration.

With its aforementioned $500/TB price tag, advanced tooling may seem expensive, but Box said it's still priced "drastically lower" than other migration tools. Depending on the case, Box said, it can be up to 75% more affordable.

Organizations that want to be completely hands off with their migration, whether coming from an on-premise solution or another cloud-based service (or services), can also opt for the full Box Shuttle migration service. The full-service option includes working directly with Box team members as well as training and planning services that Box describes as "enabling teams to hit the ground running."

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Companies interested in getting started with Box Shuttle in any manner can fill out a survey to determine their best option. Box is also hosting a webinar on June 17 at 2 pm ET time that will help interested parties learn more about Box Shuttle and best practices for migrating content.

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