Microsoft, Salesforce.com Announce Strategic Partnership

(RTTNews) - Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) and salesforce.com (CRM) announced a strategic partnership to create new solutions that connect salesforce.com's customer relationship management apps and platform to Microsoft Office and Windows so customers can be more productive. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Both companies said they plan to deliver Salesforce1 for Windows and Windows Phone 8.1 and will enable customers to access Salesforce and run their business from their Windows devices. A preview is planned to be available in fall 2014 with general availability in 2015.

The companies plan to deliver Salesforce for Office 365. New interoperability between Salesforce and Office 365 will give customers access to the content they need to collaborate, sell, service and market from virtually anywhere.

Plans include the ability to access, share, edit and collaborate on Office content from within Salesforce and on Salesforce1 using Office Mobile, Office for iPad and Office 365. Also, to 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 and connect Salesforce data to Excel and Power BI for Office 365 to visualize information and find new insights.