Microsoft offers cloud storage partners new Office collaboration, iOS integrations

Box and Dropbox are among the members of Microsoft’s Cloud Storage Partner Program (CSPP) to take advantage of new integrations that let joint-customers work more effectively with Office 365 applications.

“We designed the Cloud Storage Partner Program to make it easier for people … to work with Office documents no matter where they’re stored,” said Kirk Koenigsbauer, corporate vice president, Microsoft Office. “Today we are making major enhancements to better enable our joint customers to work and collaborate fully in the cloud from any device.”

The two cloud firms, along with other members of the CSPP like Citrix ShareFile and Egnyte, now offer real-time co-authoring for Office Online documents. This means multiple users can make concurrent edits to Word, Excel and PowerPoint files, which are then saved back to the cloud repository.

Outlook.com users will now be able to attach files directly from Box or Dropbox to emails, rather than have to save them to a desktop first, and Box customers will be able to create and edit Office files saved in Box directly from the Office for iOS suite of applications.

Microsoft says other members of the CSPP will be able to integrate with Office for iOS as well and suggests other cloud providers are already working on such functionality.

The CSPP was launched in February 2015, but Box and Dropbox have both worked with Microsoft since before then on features like Office 365 integration.

“Openness and interoperability have transformed enterprise software,” said Aaron Levie, Box CEO. “Box and Microsoft are delivering an unparalleled collaboration experience where customers have seamless access to their business content regardless of device or platform. We’re excited to work alongside Microsoft to power new levels of customer innovation in the enterprise.”