Box today launched a contest for developers to create new applications that integrate on top of its storage and collaboration technologies.

The goal is to get more developers interested in developing for the enterprise, which is in need of modern applications that fit more accordingly with the architecture that is required for cloud-based infrastructures and a post-PC culture.

Oxygen Cloud is a storage service that has found a market in providing customers with ways to easily access the files they need. Like Box, Oxygen provides a gateway that can be accessed without the need for setting up a VPN.

Both companies are in the red-hot online storage market, which is increasing in importance as organizations seek ways to open up to a blooming mobile workforce.

The acceleration of apps and easy gateways is in turn creating a new opportunity for services providers, which Box CEO Aaron Levie discussed in an interview I did with him yesterday at the MobileBeat conference in San Francisco:

The Box contest falls in line with its news that it will be offering its libraries so developers may integrate the Box storage and collaboration capabilities into their own applications. That again means more gateways for people to access what they need from mobile devices.

Box and Oxygen are both vying for the attention of the CIO, who is managing an existing legacy infrastructure and trying to keep up with the availability of services that people are using throughout the organization.

The problem? Often the services people use are not designed with the requirements that the CIO has set. Security, for example, has been an issue for Dropbox users. But people use it still for its simplicity and capabilities.

Oxygen is a self-serve offering designed for groups. It has administrative controls that IT can use to provide permissions for the individual user.

Like Box, the Oxygen team is increasingly being asked to provide solutions that traditional storage providers can not offer. The need again is for faster, automated access to mobile devices.

Enterprise storage providers are not positioned to solve this problem as they are beholden to old technologies. They do not have the nimbleness that the new services offer.

What we see out of this are emerging symbiotic relationships between the new and old providers.

Oxygen is using its technology in partnership with EMC Atmos to provide a cloud service within an enterprise, said Alex Cheu, Oxygen’s business development manager.

For Oxygen, this means it now has access to the EMC channel. And EMC has a way to offer Oxygen’s online storage with its high-end offerings.

For the customer, it means that they can provide a service that is endorsed by the company and is a lot simpler to set up and manage than manually provisioned solutions.

What can be provided is access to corporate data across all machines. The typical enterprise infrastructure, with its traditional file servers, does not support that use case.

To enable remote access, IT has to set up a VPN. That means the network has to be configured manually to connect the server to the person’s device. In a post-PC world that becomes unmanageable. There are smartphones, tablets and soon countless other devices will be online requiring access, too.

The wait to get the remote access can sometimes be weeks. Users instead self-migrate. They need access “yesterday.” They’re not going to wait.

EMC Atmos and Oxygen authenticate with the customer’s enterprise environment. For some customers, Oxygen has installed a gateway appliance that integrates with Atmos via a RESTful API. A universal cloud drive connects to the customer’s network. The cloud drive appears the same as others on the network. This is the gateway that forms the connection between the device and the enterprise.

Updates to the integration can be made remotely. Users can access the service on their devices and update the application when needed.

Services Angle

Oxygen and Box are storage providers with different strategies for the market. Box is designed for collaboration. Oxygen is purely meant for storage but with group functionality. It is known for its security.

Both of these companies have roles in the re-architecture of the enterprise. Like many modern services, they have one thing in common. And that’s their easy availability. That’s what makes the offerings compelling. They provide a gateway for the enterprise to mobile devices.

There is more to this, too, in how the ecosystem becomes part of the solution. Developers are in demand for they have the knowledge needed by the end customers and the service providers. The developers are building the APIs and the gateways.

The service providers will benefit from the transformation but they need the developer talent.

It’s a bit of a culture shock for some companies to accept the developers and their geek ways. The same is true for service providers who have a button down culture. But both need developers more than ever.

The need for app creation is only accelerating. Developers are people who like to make things. Without them, there won’t be much transformation at all. That is one thing you can count on for sure.