Earlier this week cloud storage service provider, Dropbox, unveiled its first comprehensive upgrade directed at corporate users.  Dropbox has already been embraced by consumers, but it has yet to fully infiltrate the enterprise sector.  Many cloud services that started out with consumer products are shifting to the enterprise space, where many employees have been using tools like Dropbox for work purposes.

The update allows IT administrators to track users accessing files, when the file was last viewed, grant or withhold file permissions, and rope off certain files so they may be edited but not downloaded or shared in any way.

This just might be the first step in order for businesses to take Dropbox more seriously, as the company is said to be meeting up with banks in talks for a possible initial public offering slated for the second half of 2013.

Dropbox is currently valued at $4 billion and raised $257.2 million from Sequoia Capital, Institutional Venture Partners, Goldman Sachs and others.

Though Dropbox may be performing well, investors are still iffy about its IPO because of Facebook’s botched entry on Wall Street.  Where tech and consumers intersect is a tough market to call for public trading, and the past two years have sent mixed messages for this sector.

If Dropbox is serious about the enterprise sector and an IPO, mobile will be a key market for the cloud collaboration service provider.  To that end, Dropbox has also updated its iPhone app and bow features an improved PDF viewing as well as  a new option to enable push notifications when someone shares a file with you.

CTO and Wikibon co-founder David Floyer dropped by SiliconANGLE’s NewsDesk and gave his two cents about Dropbox’s IPO.  Host Kristen Feledy asked if he thought an IPO was a good move on Dropbox’s part and here’s what Floyer had to say:

“Clearly, the objective is to be able to get a return of all the hard work that the founders have put into it, all the risks they’ve taken,” Floyer said.  “The IPO will give them some of the capabilities to be successful at generating cash and generating capability of buying some technology that would be useful for them. For example expanding into the enterprise.  So good luck to them.  They’ve done an amazing job of really defining the ease of use of this market place.  All their competitors use the tagline ‘What we have is Dropbox for…’ So they’ve really set the standards.  I think their valuation is something like $4 billion, I think for them, it’s a good move.”

Though Floyer thinks that an IPO may be the right move for them, he’s concerned about Dropbox’s efforts in the enterprise market.  Though Dropbox has done a good job in offering its service to consumers, it still needs more work in its security to be enterprise worthy.  See his full analysis below:

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Consumer cloud eyes the enterprise

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Box, Dropbox’s top rival, eyes 2014 for its IPO after it has expanded globally this year.  Box is also offering free 50GB lifetime storage for new members courtesy of Dell.  Though there’s a note that it’s only for Dell Advantage Loyalty members, just ignore that.  Anyone can sign up.

SugarSync also updated its business pricing plan, which now starts at $55 per month, or a discounted rate of $550 per year.  It can be used by three people, but if you want to add more users, that would cost you  $125 per additional user.  The cheaper plan also includes unlimited storage.  The price change aims to entice more businesses with a lot of files and large user base to move to the cloud.