Microsoft and Salesforce to enter another joint venture

People visit the Microsoft booth during the 2014 Computex exhibition at the TWTC Nangang exhibition hall in Taipei June 3, 2014 — Credit: Pichi Chuang / Reuters

Yesterday, Salesforce and Microsoft announced a strengthened 18-month-old engineering partnership. The announcement happened in San Francisco at Dreamforce.

In the new set of integrations, Microsoft products will work together with Salesforce’s completely redesigned version of its CRM product, the Salesforce Lightning Experience. They are to collaborate on four more integrations: Skype for Business, Delve, OneNote and Windows 10. Fortune reported that these technologies will be done by the second half of 2016.

The announcement includes the integration of Skype for Business, which was previously called Lync, into the Lightning platform. This enables users to carry out voice or video calls and exchange messages within Salesforce.

Another is OneNote, a Microsoft tool that facilitates viewing and editing of notes directly from Lightning. Microsoft is another addition, which assists sales people in discovering opportunities within the Salesforce.

Noteworthy is the fact that the latter feature will be incorporated in the forthcoming release of Microsoft Dynamics. The upcoming CRM product encourages web developers and programmers to tink.

Salesforce1 Mobile app for Windows 10 is also an imminent integration. This provides a leading mobile cloud tool for Windows 10, which could help bolster its mobile aspect.

The recent announcement is a continuation of the two companies’ partnership that officially began in May 2014 . The deal was closed with a strategic relationship. The new cross-product integration is a manifestation of reaped mutual benefits since the partnership was formed. Now, Salesforce will be more efficient with providing customer service through Microsoft tools, which majority of its business clients are also using. Meanwhile Microsoft enjoys access to the massive customer base of Salesforce, TechCrunch accounted.

Rumours spread last spring of a merger between the Salesforce and Microsoft last May. However, such hearsay was hushed when the two firms did not come into a price agreement.