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On a PC or Mac, it is relatively easy to save a document, whether to a hard drive or to any number of cloud storage services.
In the mobile world, though, files tend to get shoehorned into tiny, closed boxes. With iOS, there isn’t a direct file system a user can access, and like most in the space, Apple tends to prefer its own cloud storage option.
“One of the biggest challenges that you have as a consumer of these technologies is you have a bunch of silos,” Box CEO Aaron Levie said in an interview Monday.
But, while Apple did announce a bunch of new iCloud features at its developer conference, it also announced a new option coming with iOS 8 for customers to save and retrieve documents from their cloud of choice. Among the storage options Apple showed as possibilities were Box and Microsoft’s OneDrive.
“We’ve been hoping for it for a long time,” Levie said, speaking on the sidelines of Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco. “Literally, for the past three to four years we have been wanting to see it in the industry, and it is finally happening.”
It’s important, Levie said, especially for business customers that have chosen a cloud provider, such as Box, and want to be able to use it across all their company’s devices.
“All of a sudden your enterprise has tens of thousands of iPads and iPhones and you need ways of moving around content and documents between those devices,” Levie said. “That is one of the biggest drivers of our growth.”
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
