Why Businesses Are Switching from Box to Microsoft 365-Native Collaboration

Before Microsoft 365, running Box to enable secure sharing with external users made sense. But, in a modern digital workplace, it’s redundant. when you can collaborate safely within Microsoft 365 applications with governance built into their workflows. M365 unifies the functions of legacy on-premises data-sharing platforms like Box with superior security and operational efficiency, and data never leaves the tenant.  The modern collaboration model is built to enhance M365 with a continuous governance model that contains external collaborations and restricts data access with Zero Trust principles.

The issue CIOs and CISOs keep facing

Large enterprises that continue the “two-platform” era by combining an on-premises tool with a digital workplace (i.e., Box plus M365) produces the same pain points repeatedly:

• Shadow IT: When native M365 sharing feels restrictive, people bypass it: emailing attachments, spinning up unmanaged links, or allowing data to leave the domain. The result? Blind spots for security and compliance.

• Increasing cost of compliance: External collaborative tools create redundant audit scopes, overlapping retention policies, and fragmented event tracking. Separating governance from day-to-day work renders governance inflexible and weak.

• Unnecessary costs: You’re paying licensing fees for internal collaboration and doubling data storage costs.  

• Data sprawl: Files escape the Microsoft 365 tenant, fragmenting versions and undermining one source of truth. Bad for people, worse for AI.

If Microsoft 365 is your primary business platform, what's the secure collaboration alternative to Box built specifically for Microsoft 365 that extends its least-privilege security model to data and simplifies the user experience?

The answer isn't "just do something built-in"

Microsoft 365 already brings strong identity, labeling, DLP, and audit primitives. But enterprises—especially regulated industries with complex workflows and strict compliance requirements—need a purpose-built governance solution woven into the fabric of M365 that eliminates:   External friction & inconsistency (e.g., guest account overhead, link blocking, partner confusion) that slows business.

• Static enforcement that can’t balance risk and productivity based on data sensitivity, user role, or business context in real time.

• Fragmented experiences across Outlook, Teams, SharePoint, and OneDrive when policies aren’t applied uniformly.  

The inability to solve these challenges is why many businesses using M365 keep Box around “just for external sharing” despite its increased cost and risks.

A better operating model: a collaboration fabric within Microsoft 365

A better way to collaborate that replaces Box and increases M365’s ROI is to keep collaboration inside your tenant and weave governance into users’ native workflows. Imagine it as a Trusted Collaboration Fabric: a unifying layer that connects identity, data sensitivity, business signals, and policy decisions with every link shared across Outlook, Teams, SharePoint, and OneDrive.

What the fabric does:

⒈ Data Containment: Bring users to your data and stop giving your data to users. Replacing files with links keeps your data in Microsoft 365 as the single and reliable source, eliminating duplication and version chaos.  

⒉ In-App Collaboration: Whether work starts in Sharepoint, Outlook or Teams, internal and external users end up the same shared, secured workspace under the data owner’s control.

⒊ Real-Time Policy Enforcement: All access and sharing policies are evaluated in real time against M365’s labels, DLP tags, identity risk, and business attributes, and enforced with least privilege controls that adapt as risk conditions change.

⒋ Bring‑Your‑Own‑Identity (BYOI): Partners can authenticate using their email credentials without the overhead and impediment of guest account management.  

⒌ Observability and Analytics: Keep a continuous forensic record of all data sharing and access by individuals for compliance, investigation, and security improvement.

Collaborating inside M365 enables a simplified and secure experience: a user shares a link → a policy decision point evaluates the risk context → Microsoft 365 enforces the decision → events feed analytics. It’s based on Zero Trust principles extended to data without frustrating users or impeding productivity.

eSHARE + Microsoft 365: Trusted Collaboration Without Compromise

eSHARE implements the fabric natively on Microsoft 365 so security and compliance work in unison:

• Link‑first external sharing (including automatic conversion of email attachments to secure links), enforcing data‑centric controls like view‑only, watermarking, expiry, and revocation.  

• Real‑time enforcement at the time of data sharing and access using attributes like labels, DLP tags, user risk, business unit, citizenship, and more.

• Trusted external experience (BYOI) that makes sharing data with partners easier and eliminates shadow IT workarounds.

• Deep auditability across channels, feeding SIEM/BI for continuous oversight.  

The result: eSHARE eliminates the unnecessary cost and risk of Box to secure external data sharing by amplifyingthe Microsoft 365 controls you already own. That’s why eSHARE is rapidly becoming the preferred Box replacement for regulated industries (healthcare, pharma, aerospace/defense, financial services).

Compliance confidence for regulated environments

Whether you’re aligning to HIPAA/GLBA or demonstrating CMMC Level 2 readiness, the same governance concepts delivered by eSHARE + M365 apply: keep sensitive data in the tenant, enforce least privilege continuously, and maintain a defensible chain‑of‑custody for every collaborative action. eSHARE’s Trusted Collaboration Fabric maps cleanly to these requirements and provides the evidence trail auditors require.

Conclusion

Running Box next to Microsoft 365 is a legacy pattern that increases cost and risk without improving business outcomes. If you need a Box alternative for Microsoft 365 that executives, knowledge workers, and auditors can all live with, the best approach is eSHARE’s Trusted Collaboration Fabric governance layer woven into your Microsoft 365 tenant.  

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