Dropbox and Microsoft have announced a strategic partnership. Following the partnership, Dropbox app is said to be coming soon for Windows Phone. But this partnership is much bigger than just bringing the app to Microsoft's mobile platform. Dropbox's cloud storage service will be integrated in Microsoft Office for phones, tablets and the web.
This partnership will enable users to easily collaborate on documents, spreadsheets and presentations. These capabilities will first be available from within the Dropbox and Office apps on tablets and phones, and will soon be accessible via the Web. It claims that these functionalities will be integrated in the next update of the Android and iOS apps, followed by web integration in first half of 2015.
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Essentially, users can browse files stored on Dropbox within Office apps, edit, and save them. The changes will be automatically synced with Dropbox. This is a huge win for Dropbox, which has been trying to get market share among enterprise users and it claims that it stores more than 35 billion office files. Note that Microsoft already supports OneDrive Cloud storage and following the partnership, Dropbox's cloud storage will appear simultaneously with OneDrive option.
Office apps are still one of the major revenue stream for Microsoft after Windows operating system. As consumers shift from desktop to mobile devices such as phones and tablets, a closed environment is not something that is encouraged by users. Cross platform integration will definitely help Microsoft in staying relevant.
