Months after announcing a strategic partnership, Microsoft and leading cloud CRM software vendor Salesforce have officially taken the wraps off the joint products that will link the their business software ecosystems.
First teased during a May 29 announcement, the companies unveiled the Salesforce1 app for Windows at the DreamForce conference in San Francisco. The app, currently available as a part of an invite-only preview, provides a native mobile Salesforce app experience to users of Windows 8.1 devices. The finished app is expected to arrive during the second half of 2015.
Salesforce Files, part of the Salesforce for Office slate, promotes access to mobile content and collaboration via Microsoft SharePoint. Salesforce Files is available now.
Salesforce1 integration with Microsoft Office, SharePoint and OneDrive for Business on iOS devices and Android phones will enable customers to seamlessly open, edit and save documents. General availability is anticipated for the second half of 2015.
As part of Salesforce for Office, the business software makers are working on Salesforce1 integration for Office, SharePoint and OneDrive for Business. Scheduled for a release during the first half of 2015, the software will allow Android and iOS users to open, edit and save documents on their mobile devices. Also in the first half, the companies plan to release a Salesforce1 App for Outlook, enabling users to directly access and manage Salesforce data from Microsoft’s popular email, contacts and calendar software.
Finally, Salesforce is continuing its cloud analytics push with Power BI for Office 365 and Excel Power Query integrations. The companies plan to switch on the respective business data discovery, reporting and visualization capabilities for the products in the first and second halves of 2015.
On Oct. 13, Salesforce CEO and founder Marc Benioff announced Salesforce Wave, the company’s sixth “sub cloud.” Based on technology from its acquisition of EdgeSpring, Wave allows Salesforce users to explore and visualize CRM, sales, workflow and marketing data to unearth potentially business-boosting insights.
“Salesforce is disrupting the analytics market, just as we disrupted the CRM industry 15 years ago,” Benioff said in a statement. Salesforce is “empowering companies to know their customers like never before with the groundbreaking Wave Analytics Cloud,” he continued.
Tony Prophet, corporate vice president of Microsoft Windows Marketing, said during an on-stage discussion with Benioff at DreamForce, that the “spirit of the partnership” between the two companies is to make the experience of working with both Salesforce and Office a seamless one. “So whether you’re coming from the Salesforce context or you’re coming from the Office context, those two ecosystems, those two platforms, will interoperate.”
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in a statement that he was “pleased with the progress our teams have made over the past few months” and is looking forward to customers taking the technology for a spin. “Our focus is on empowering every individual and organization on the planet to be more productive—and that’s exactly what this partnership will fuel.”