Salesforce draws closer to Microsoft with Azure usage, Teams integration

Salesforce and Microsoft announced plans for multiple new partnership touchpoints. Microsoft Azure will become the public cloud provider of Salesforce Marketing Cloud. And Salesforce plans to build new integrations between Microsoft Teams and its Sales Cloud and Service Cloud.

Microsoft's Office 365 integration work with Salesforce dates back to 2014.  

"The new integration will build on existing solutions that enable mutual customers to be more productive, including the hundreds of thousands of monthly active users using Salesforce’s Microsoft Outlook integration to create, communicate and collaborate," a Microsoft spokesperson stated.

Two of the shared customers noted in today's announcement are Marriot and Unilever. Spokespeople for both companies stated that better integration will improve both customer service and collaboration within their respective organizations.

Microsoft says running  the Salesforce Marketing Cloud on Azure will improve performance at scale, reduce customer onboarding times, and simplify globally expansion.

As with past announcements of the ongoing but often acrimonious partnership between Microsoft and Salesforce, today's news serves both companies' efforts. Teams is one of Microsoft's highest priority products, where the company's strategy for continued adoption and  growth includes a drive to bring together data and processes from across systems as workers collaborate. Given the impressive adoption so far, large joint customers will be looking to the vendors to deliver optimal integrated experiences.