So let’s dissect it in our custom style, the press release can be found here:
SAN FRANCISCO—DREAMFORCE 2015—Sept. 16, 2015—Today Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) and Salesforce (NYSE: CRM) announced plans to extend their strategic partnership to connect the Salesforce Customer Success Platform to Microsoft Office productivity apps and services. The two leaders plan to deliver new solutions that integrate Salesforce with Skype for Business, OneNote, Delve and Windows 10 to empower companies to connect with their customers and collaborate more effectively.
MyPOV – Well that sums it up pretty well. Both vendors are partnering to help customers and Microsoft is brining key productivity / collaboration assets to Salesforce users. Joint customer see immediate value from this partnership.
Microsoft and Salesforce continue to deliver on their strategic partnership with the general availability of two new integrations announced in October 2014: Salesforce App for Outlook, which works with Outlook 2013 and Office 365, and Salesforce1 Mobile App for Microsoft Office.
MyPOV – Always good to see continuity of a partnership, this first partnership deliverable has almost been forgotten, but good to be reminded. Even better if we knew what the uptake in the market has been.
New Integrations to Make Joint Customers More Productive Than Ever Before Microsoft and Salesforce have committed to working together to bring the following solutions to life:
· Skype for Business Integration with Salesforce Lightning Experience: Salesforce will integrate Skype for Business (formerly known as Lync) into its new Lightning Experience, a modern and re-imagined Salesforce that combines an intelligent new user experience with proven best practices that enable people to work faster and smarter. Office 365 customers will be able to use Skype for Business to create Web meetings, determine if colleagues are online or not, click to chat and make voice and video calls from the Salesforce Lightning Experience. A preview is anticipated in the second half of 2016.
MyPOV Good to see Microsoft being early in getting to the latest Salesforce experience with Lightning. Good for Office 365 users who now can do more from Salesforce. Avoiding context switches is always valuable for time pressured business users. Surprising that there is no mention of Salesforce Chatter, which would have been another intuitive entry point in my view.
· OneNote Integration with Salesforce Lightning Experience: Users will be able to associate notes with Salesforce records, and view and edit notes directly in OneNote from the Salesforce Lightning Experience. A preview is anticipated in the second half of 2016.
MyPOV – An interesting announcement, consistent to the strategy of Microsoft to move OneNote ‘everywhere’. The ETA for the solution is remarkably far out with 2nd half of 2016. It will also be interesting to see where the OneNote information will be stored – on the Salesforce cloud or the Microsoft / Azure / Office365 cloud – which has both performance and compliance implications.
· Salesforce Integration with Office Graph and Office Delve: Enabled by the Office Graph, an open ecosystem for sharing, collaboration and discovery, Office 365 users will be able to view BN and discover Salesforce content in Office Delve, such as sales opportunities, customer accounts and service cases. Availability is anticipated in the second half of 2016.
MyPOV – Good to see more recent Microsoft innovations like Graph and Delve being part of this partnership announcement. Enabling information from Salesforce to reach them is good step forward for a richer user experience and will result in better uptake for these newer products. And same as above – less content switching, logging in and logging out for business users.
· Salesforce1 Mobile App for Windows 10: Salesforce will deliver a Windows 10 app to empower sales teams to move deals forward while on the go, using their favorite Windows device. Availability is anticipated in the second half of 2016.
MyPOV – This was a holdout on the Salesforce portfolio. Good to see Salesforce1 coming to Windows 10. Interesting Salesforce is not building a Windows Universal App (or its not mentioned here) something that should work well for these needs.
Comments on the News:
· “Customer success is at the heart of everything we do at Salesforce, including our partnership with Microsoft,” said Marc Benioff, Chairman and CEO, Salesforce. “Our collaboration has been so successful, now we’re doubling down and delivering even more innovation that will help our mutual customers be more productive and connect with their customers in a whole new way."
· “Furthering our mission to empower every person and organization on the planet to achieve more, is the motivating force behind our partnership with Salesforce,” said Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft Corp. “As a platform and productivity company, we are focused on bringing together the best of Microsoft Azure, Office and Windows with partners like Salesforce to empower our mutual customers to network, collaborate, communicate and discover information in more effective ways.”
· "As a global company with more than 400 brands, we are always looking for ways to strengthen collaboration across departments and take the complexity out of work,” said Paulo De Sa, VP Employee Services Technology, Unilever. “Together, Salesforce and Microsoft Office are helping us create an integrated digital workplace where our 170,000+ employees around the world can be more productive and connect with each other and with customers like never before.”
MyPOV – Powerful statements by all three gentlemen, Benioff with a focus on ‘the customer must win’ and more productivity Nadella on the ‘Office everywhere theme’ and De Sa on a joint customer being delighted.
Building on a Foundation of Success These new integrations will build on existing joint solutions that enable mutual customers to be more productive than ever before, including:
· Salesforce Files Connect integration with SharePoint and OneDrive for Business
· Salesforce Wave Connector for Excel
· Salesforce integration with Power Query for Excel
· Salesforce Mobile SDK for Windows
· Salesforce1 for Windows 8.1 Phone Preview
· Power BI for Office 365 integration with Salesforce
MyPOV – Always good to see what partnership products have been released already.
Overall MyPOV
Good move by both Salesforce and Microsoft to integrate their products better. When vendors do that, the business user is the winner, resulting in higher productivity and usage of their familiar applications. Another data point validating the ‘new’ Microsoft and the ‘OneNote’ everywhere strategy. Salesforce users get more productive and the vendor is showing it can partner with all major technology vendors.On the concern side I am surprised by the almost (at least) twelve months out delivery dates – a very far horizon in these days of cloud based and delivered products. Maybe it is not so easy to connect between the Salesforce Cloud and Azure? Should not be the case – given the recent work Salesforce has done with Salesforce App Cloud – the first multi-cloud PaaS. This is more about what it is not yet – Salesforce maybe using Azure or even SQL Server / Azure DB to move off its current Oracle database for its transactional applications. But was has not happen, can still happen, there is a lot of synergies between the two vendors waiting to be exploited (Machine Learning, IoT, PaaS, BigData etc. just come to mind immediately).
But for now a good move by both tech giants creating value for mutual customers, that’s what customer (and influencers) want to see – value creation for businesses by increased productivity. More of that, please.
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More time - checkout what I want Salesforce to address this Dreamforce:
<video>More about Microsoft:
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- Event Report - Microsoft Build - Microsoft really wants to make developers' lives easier - read here
- First Hand with Microsoft Hololens - read here
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- First Take - Microsoft discovers data ambience and delivers an organic approach to in memory database - read here
- Event Report - Microsoft Build - Azure grows and blossoms - enough for enterprises (yet)? Read here.
- Event Report - Microsoft Build Day 1 Keynote - Top Enterprise Takeaways - read here.
- Microsoft gets even more serious about devices - acquire Nokia - read here.
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- Event Preview - What I would like Salesforce to address this Dreamforce 2015 - read / watch here
- News Analysis - Salesforce Announces Salesforce App Cloud - A Unified Platform for Building Connected Apps, Fast - It’s all coming together, across the clouds - read here
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- News Analysis - Salesforce Transforms Big Data Into Customer Success with the Salesforce Analytics Cloud - Read here
- News Analysis - Market Move - Salesforce (re) enters HCM - will it rypple the market this time? - Read here
- Event Report - Salesforce Dreamforce - A Customer Succes Platform, Analytics and Lightning - but really Salesforce is re-platforming - read here
- Constellation Research Summary of Salesforce Dreamforce 2014 - read here
- Research Summary - An in depth look at Salesforce1 - Better packaging or new offerng? Read here.
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- Our take on Salesforce.com Identity Connect - from three angles - Identity, CRM and PaaS - read here.
- Takeaways from the Salesforce and Workday Strategic Partnership - read here.
- Act II - The Cloud changes everything - Oracle and Salesforce.com - read here.
- How many Pivots make a Pirouette? Salesforce's last Pivot - read here.