Microsoft and Dropbox team up to integrate Office with the storage service
Microsoft and Dropbox are competitors in the field of cloud storage. Redmond's OneDrive service is one of the main rivals to Dropbox's proposal, but the two appear to have found more reasons to cooperate than to continue competing. That at least is what emerges from the agreement announced today by both companies.
Surprising everyone and everyone, Microsoft and Dropbox have announced a strategic agreement with which they seek to integrate Office and the popular cloud storage service.According to data shared by the two companies, Dropbox users host more than 35 billion Office files in their accounts and both tools are often used in combination, so the collaboration is self-explanatory.
The agreement, which will involve the Office and Dropbox applications for mobiles, tablets and their corresponding web versions, aims to make it easier for users to use the combined two services Thanks to it, users of both will be able to do the following:
- Access Dropbox from Office applications and directly save new documents to the storage service.
- Edit Office documents directly from Dropbox and sync them between devices.
- Share files from within Office applications using the features that Dropbox provides for sharing.
The plan is for these features to arrive first in the Dropbox and Office apps on mobile phones and tablets, then later roll out to the web. In this way, in the coming weeks they will begin to be accessible through updates to the Office applications for iOS and Android. Web integration will have to wait until the first half of 2015.
The agreement also brings good news for users of Microsoft operating systems. And it is that Dropbox plans to develop applications for Windows Phone and Windows 8.1 They will arrive in the coming months, without yet knowing a specific date.
Via | Microsoft | Dropbox
