Microsoft, Salesforce provide update on their joint partnership
In May, Microsoft and Salesforce announced a pact via which the two would collaborate on increasing the integration ties between the two companies' products.
On October 13, officials provided an update during Salesforce's Dreamforce conference in San Francisco on their jointly developed deliverables. Those include:
Salesforce1 for Windows app: Microsoft and Salesforce are working on Salesforce apps that will run on Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1 devices. The apps are currently available to select testers through an invite-only preview. The Salesforce1 app for Windows 8.1 is being optimized to run on tablets under eight inches in size, officials said. General availability is slated for the second half of 2015. In the meantime, Salesforce1 users can access Salesforce1 through IE on Windows 8.1.
Salesforce-Office integration: The pair are integrating Salesforce Filesl with Office, SharePoint and OneDrive for Business. Once the integration is generally available in the first half of 2015, users will be able to open, edit and save documents accessed through Salesforce.com via a browser or the Salesforce1 mobile app.
Salesforce1 app for Outlook: A new app in development will allow users to acess and manage their Salesforce information from Outlook 2013, Exchange Server 2013 and Office 365. General availability is slated for first half of 2015.
Power BI and Excel integration with Salesforce: Microsoft and Salesforce are integrating their respective products so customers will be able to bidirectionally load data to Salesforce and Excel to build reports and visualize information via PowerB BI. The Salesforce connector for Microsoft's Power Query for Excel is in preview now, with general availability slated for the first half of 2015. Power BI integration with Salesforce is targeted for the first half of 2015, and a new Salesforce app for Excel is due in the second half of 2015.
Since Microsoft's new CEO Satya Nadella took the helm in February, Microsoft has announced new and/or renewed partnerships with a variety of companies including Adobe, Salesforce and SAP.
While it is collaborating more closely with Salesforce, Microsoft is still competing head-to-head with that company in the CRM space.