14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft recently announced a new global partnership with Salesforce.com that will help deliver what the software giant called “new solutions and mobile experiences to mutual customers.”
While that's indeed fairly vague, Microsoft says that it wants to connect Salesforce.com's customer relationship management (CRM) platform to its own solutions, including Office and Windows, in order to provide enhanced productivity.
Just as expected, the terms of deals were not disclosed, but more details are very likely to be disclosed soon by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Salesforce.com chairman and CEO Marc Benioff in a conference call for press and analysts.
The two obviously provided the typical statements when signing new deals, explaining that Microsoft and Salesforce.com are very likely to work together very well and provide customers with enhanced functionality for the products they buy.
“We are excited to partner with salesforce.com and help customers thrive in a mobile and cloud-first world,” said Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft. “Working together we’ll deliver new solutions that connect the customer insights of Salesforce to the cloud productivity of Office 365, the cloud platform of Azure and the mobility of Windows, so our customers can do more.”
“Today is about putting the customer first,” said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, salesforce.com. “Together with Microsoft, we are building bridges that allow customers to be more productive.”
Microsoft and Salesforce.com are basically working to offer two different solutions: Salesforce1 for Windows and Windows Phone 8.1 and Salesforce for Office 365.
The first application will basically allow customers to access Salesforce and control their business straight from their Windows device, be it a tablet or a smartphone running Microsoft's modern operating system. The software giant says that a preview is expected to be launched in the fall of 2014, while general availability should be announced in 2015.
As far as Salesforce for Office 365 is concerned, its purpose is pretty much obvious. Customers will be capable of access productivity solutions that would allow them to collaborate, sell, service, and market from everywhere.
Microsoft says that this second option comes with several abilities, including the following:
Access, share, edit and collaborate on Office content from within Salesforce and on Salesforce1 using Office Mobile, Office for iPad and Office 365. Use OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online as integrated storage options for Salesforce. Use Salesforce and Outlook together with a new Salesforce App for Outlook. Connect Salesforce data to Excel and Power BI for Office 365 to visualize information and find new insights.