Microsoft promotes a borderless world for Office

Nadella’s Microsoft is such a different beast from the old and bad days. The newest wrinkle comes in the form of an announcement by Kirk Koenigsbauer, corporate vice president for the Office team.

Microsoft has enabled third-party storage providers — like Box and Apple iCloud — can natively integrate into the iOS ‘locations’ picker, as you see here:

New-Cloud-storage-integration-for-Office-1

This means I can edit documents stored in Box, iCloud, and Dropbox in Office apps on iOS. This will soon be implemented for Android and Windows Phone.

Microsoft has also instrumented Office Online so that other cloud services can integrate those apps into their services. Box, Citrix, and Salesforce have announced that they are working with Microsoft in the new Cloud Storage Partner Program. So, for example, I would be able to edit a Word document in the context of Citrix ShareFile.

Microsoft has moved from trying to use a closed Office as a strategic means of ensuring Windows loyalty, only a few years ago, to a new stance in which Office is being opened up from all directions. The brand new Microsoft.

 

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Stowe Boyd

Stowe Boyd

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