The Power Couple: Dropbox & Microsoft Office

From running a small business to saving personal documents, we use the Internet for everything. We’re constantly on our tablets and phones, our laptops and desktops and our work and home computers. Unfortunately, all our technology doesn’t always play well together. With so many ways to be productive, wouldn’t it be a dream to have our devices integrate seamlessly?

The Power Couple

Now, imagine your two most successful and reliable Internet friends get married. Although not quite as pretty in a wedding dress, Dropbox has married long-time counterpart Microsoft Office. The two have dated on and off for years, but their recent nuptials make them the power couple of 2014.

Dropbox brings cloud storage and Microsoft Office brings the productivity platform, making this a strategic partnership. Although an article on ComputerWorld concludes Office 365 gets more out of the relationship, this move is smart for Dropbox, too. With this partnership, Dropbox will appear alongside Microsoft’s own cloud-storage service OneDrive. What this means for all the other cloud storage options out there, only time will tell. For now, Top 10 Cloud Storage compares the features included in various cloud-storage subscription services including Dropbox.

The Partnership Details

This 2014 partnership is still new, and the details are fuzzy. However, here are a few things that are in store for the couple in 2015:

• Microsoft is in the process of revamping its Office apps for mobile devices. Soon after this revamp, the company will move on to improving Office online apps (the web versions of the applications).
• Dropbox is modifying its mobile app so that users will have the ability to accesses stored documents via the Office platform.
• Although the companies are currently working on Windows and iOS development, there are plans to develop Android integration in the future.
• With a subscription to Office 365, users will always have the latest versions of all the Office apps (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.), which will allow them to create, edit and share with anyone, from any device, in real time.
• Business subscribers to Dropbox have 1 TB of space per user. This space can include calendars, videos and contents, all sharable on the cloud.
• Saving documents to Dropbox is already easy, but with prompts to download Office apps, integration from Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook will be nearly seemless.
• Dropbox’s Project Harmony is particularly useful for business collaboration. Shared files and folders will allow users to see when others are accessing the documents through Dropbox.

What This Means for Cloud Storage

This partnership is likely indicative of the direction cloud-storage is headed. With so many cloud options available, Dropbox might not have survived long term had it not been for this. Microsoft Office already has the reputation and platform for productivity apps, and Dropbox had no plans to develop that platform (and likely would not have succeeded in Office’s wake). So, how many partnerships like this will ensue? Are the other cloud-storage options bound for ill fate? Time will tell how the niche industry will fare.

~ David