Microsoft Signs GE – Good or Bad for Box?

On July 19, 2015 it was announced that Microsoft landed GE as an Office 365 customer. A little over a month ago Box for Office Online was announced. Now, the Box-MSFT thing isn’t really a partnership in the sense that Box-IBM is, but it is more than just OEMing or white labelling, it seems to me. It also seems that, if cards are played correctly, the MSFT-GE announcement could prove to be quite good for Box.

First of all, I do not have any knowledge of how GE is using Box or how many folks at GE it’s been deployed to; everything in this post is speculative on my part. Anyways, what follows is my pretend version of a fictitious conversation between Aaron Levie and Satya Nadella (apologies in advance to both – no disrespect is intended).

Satya and Aaron chat about the O365-GE deal.

And there you have it. Can Box leverage the opportunity that’s in front of them? I know how I’d play it if I were Aaron Levie. However, if GE opted to go with OneDrive (why would they?) this story could have a less than happy ending (in the GE context, I mean).