Microsoft and Dropbox are teaming up to bring Office integration to Dropbox cloud storage service for phones, tablets, desktops, and on the web. Now users will be able to seamlessly create, edit, and share Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents store on Dropbox with the same OneDrive integration users already get with Office 365.
The news comes just days after Microsoft announced that Office 365 users (personal and business) will be upgraded to unlimited storage on OneDrive.
Although, Microsoft patterning with a competitor may seem surprising to many people, it all has a logical explanation. For Microsoft the money isn’t on OneDrive, it’s on Office 365 subscriptions, and integrating Office 365 to work properly with Dropbox helps the software giant to expand and get more customers to use the popular suite of applications, but more importantly you get more people dependent on Office.
It’s all part of Microsoft’s new vision of a “mobile-first and cloud first world”, where the company focuses on getting as much services as they can in hands of customers, instead of just competing and restricting other platforms to access a service. It’s an intelligent move from Microsoft part.
The Office and Dropbox announcement was made today and Microsoft explains that Dropbox users will see the following changes:
- Easy access to Dropbox using Office apps.
- Sync documents across devices and the ability to edit Office files stored in Dropbox.
- Dropbox sharing functionality.
The integration isn’t there yet, Microsoft says that users can expect full integration of Dropbox and Office app in coming updates. Even though, Dropbox already has an app for desktops PC, the company is working to release a new version to include the new changes, and a Windows Phone app is also coming. Office Online and Dropbox site will get full integration by mid-2015. While Apple’s iOS and Android will be getting the new changes in the coming weeks.
Source Microsoft
