Microsoft and Dropbox team up to offer direct Office integration

[Justin Kahn]

Just after Microsoft announced unlimited cloud storage for Office 365 subscribers, the company is now taking on an unlikely partner. While Redmond seems to be pushing into the cloud space aggressively, it has now announced a partnership with one of its strongest OneDrive competitors: Dropbox. The two companies have worked out a deal that will see the Office apps for iOS and Android get direct integration into Dropbox’s storage service, among other things.

The deal focuses on various aspects of integration, starting off with being able to access/edit Microsoft Office documents from the mobile Dropbox app and vice versa. Users will also be able to share Dropbox links to Office apps, get full multi-device cloud synching and there will now be support for first-party Dropbox content for Microsoft’s mobile apps. 

While it may seem weird that Microsoft would get in bed with one of its main competitors to some, it seems the company just can’t deny the sheer numbers Dropbox has produced. It sits with more than 80,000 paying business customers on top of hundreds of millions of basic users, and Microsoft wants them all using Office. 

A Dropbox app for Windows Phone and tablets is expected in the coming months and iOS/Android, Dropbox for Business and Office 365 support should be available over the next few weeks. We should also be seeing Office Online and the browser based Dropbox integrate sometime in early 2015.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/58697-dropbox-microsoft-partnership-office-integration.html

 

[Jad Chaar]

I would have never expected this.... but this is great news since OneDrive kind of sucks currently and I would much rather have it for use on my Office for iPad.

 

[Kibaruk]

I didn't get it at first but Microsoft is actually worried with Drive's solution at hand, that now allows you to view and edit documents/pdf on mobile devices.

 

[JohnCB]

Smart move. There are really 3 players in the "cloud" storage market for end users. OneDrive, Dropbox and Google drive. Prior to this announcement, for the everyday user it appeared as though oneDrive had some weird custom setup that allowed it to work with Office. This made Dropbox/Google Drive appear more standardized.

By adding Dropbox support to Office they've completely flipped the view. Now it seems like it's common and "normal" for office integration and it's Google's Drive who is now outdated and unable to keep up.

Instead of being a singular feature set, they've instead made their competitor look outdated and still managed to significantly increase their user base.