Published on the 05/06/2014 | Written by Newsdesk
Last week’s partnership announcement between Microsoft and Salesforce shows a pragmatic Microsoft leadership that wants to integrate more with existing ecosystems…
In a move that is becoming more common in a Nadella-led Microsoft, the software giant has announced a new strategic partnership with rival Salesforce. The newly-cemented relationship will see both parties work to create new solutions that connect salesforce.com’s customer relationship management (CRM) apps and platform to Microsoft Office and Windows “so customers can be more productive”.
Gartner research VP Brian Prentice said, however, that the move was more pragmatic than strategic. With Microsoft making a big commitment in the cloud, the two companies are going to increasingly run into situations where their joint clients want to know how to integrate the two systems and this announcement is them being pragmatic and getting ahead of the game, he said.
The companies plan to launch Salesforce1 for Windows and Windows Phone 8.1 in 2015, which will enable customers to access Salesforce and run their business from their Windows devices. They are also working on new interoperability between Salesforce and the full Office 365 suite which will “give users access to the content they need to collaborate, sell, service and market from virtually anywhere”.
When asked by iStart what impact the announcement will have on Microsoft’s own Dynamics CRM solution, Gartner’s Prentice said there would be none. “Dynamics CRM is going to be competing with Salesforce.com no matter what. Microsoft, I think, is getting to the point where they realise they live in an environment where they have to snap in to existing platforms and ecosystems,” he said.
“From Microsoft’s standpoint they are looking for as many points of validation for Office 365 as possible,” he said. “Look at what they are doing in making Office available on iPad. Supporting iPad doesn’t mean they are pulling Surface out […] but they are being pragmatic – you are not going to get rid of the iPad, so likewise I think it is exactly the same situation for Dynamics CRM.”
Prentice added that Salesforce and Microsoft will still compete fiercely on the platform level, and Microsoft is not making any announcement that it is trying to integrate the Salesforce.com platform or APIs into the Azure environment or the broader Windows environment. “That’s really where the core part of the competition is going on and that really hasn’t changed at all,” he said.
