Marc Benioff said “Today is about putting the customer first” when talking about salesforce.com and Microsoft announcing a partnership to connect salesforce.com applications and platform with Microsoft Office and Windows. If it is truly about the customer, what does it mean for salesforce.com customers?
Access Salesforce on Windows Devices
Using two solutions – Salesforce1 for Windows and Windows Phone 8.1 – customers using Windows clients will access Salesforce data just as iOS and Android users have been able to do since the Salesforce1 launch. A fall 2014 preview is planned with a 2015 GA date.
- Enjoy a new level of interoperability between Salesforce and Microsoft Solutions
A new solution – Salesforce for Office 365 – plans to have a significant integration between the respective companies offerings, including the ability to:
- Access, share, and edit Office 365 content within Salesforce and Salesforce1
- Integrate Microsoft OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online storage solutions with Salesforce
- Integrate Salesforce and Outlook better using a new Salesforce App for Outlook solution
- Connect Salesforce data to Excel and Power BI for Office 365 for visualization and analysis
It’s exciting new for our customers, many of them who use technology from both salesforce.com and Microsoft. Historically there has never been great integration between the solutions. Customers want it, they need it. They are tired of alt-tabbing between the two solutions. Having a seamless user interface between both solutions brings the best that both companies provide.
A concern I have is that salesforce.com have announced other partnerships like this in the past – with Box.com and Google Apps – and over time those announcements and integrations did not live up to the fanfare. What may be different here is the extent to which corporate America has invested in Microsoft and Salesforce technology. There may be more market demand for these new offerings, and the degree to which Salesforce for Office 365 can seamlessly integrate the solutions will determine its success.
As a cloud advocate what is exciting about this announcement is the degree to which the cloud, ubiquitous connectivity, and open APIs’ allow heterogeneous cloud services to be combined into a powerful solution where the customer can be blissfully unaware of the underlying technology. You can have Salesforce (running on its multiple platforms) and Microsoft solutions integrated from a user interface perspective and thereby “putting the customer first”!
