In its first acquisition since 2009, Box (News - Alert), a data storage company, has picked up Crocodoc, a company that provides technology to display and annotate documents at high fidelity in a browser.

A five-year-old company, Crocodoc's technology is used by LinkedIn (News - Alert), Yammer, SAP, and Box's rival Dropbox, among others.

Integrating Crocodoc's technology into Box's document storage and collaboration service should help Crocodoc reach-end users directly, which its CEO Ryan Damico says is a long-term goal. 

Box CEO Aaron Levie said that the company was attracted to Crocodoc because of its speedy, high-fidelity rendering. With Crocodoc, users are able to zoom into a PDF file without much stalling. Crocodoc uses HTML5 and the Scalable Vector Graphic (SVG) format, and renders the files in the cloud.  

“It's really the back end piece where years of labor have gone into this,” Levie remarked. “There are an unbelievable amount of edge cases – getting every single format to look this good is the hard part.”

By using Crocodoc's technology, Box could likely appeal to users in vertical industries, where the company is keen on developing interest. A medical app maker, for example, could better display medical documents and files. Or, an architectural firm could display its CAD files with the service.

Box's use of Crocodoc will be rolled out to the some 17,000 developers building on the Box platform, not just to Box end-customers. 

Sam Schillace, the product chief of Box, who invented the technology that evolved into Google (News - Alert) Docs and joined Box last fall after eight years at Google, highlighted the importance of display in collaboration – an aesthetic one might not immediately consider.

“As an enterprise company, you are competing with consumer quality, end-user experience. You can't just shove something into the enterprise and expect it to work. People won't use it,” Schillace said.

Users should note that Crocodoc only allows for viewing and simple annotations. Users can't edit the document without downloading it – so there's no change in that department, but Schillace hinted that document creation is in the works down the road for Box.

Terms of the acquisition have not been revealed.