Look Inside Box, The Hot Storage Startup Set To IPO This Year [Photos]

Box, the cloud storage provider that just snagged a $1 billion sales hotshot from SAP, is about to make the leap to becoming a public company.

As Business Insider reported several weeks ago, the company is looking to raise an estimated $500 million when it goes public later this year, a process it officially began with a confidential filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission last month.

While selling cloud storage and collaboration software to big business might not sound like much fun to some, the atmosphere at Box's Silicon Valley headquarters suggests otherwise.

From the use of the company's relaxing blue hue throughout to a two-story slide and a giant gong used to announce big sales achievements, the office that Box moved into when its employee count first topped 400 - it's at over 950 now - gives the impression that Box has managed to avoid the somewhat stuffy persona that non-techies associate with companies like IBM and Oracle.