Microsoft rival Salesforce partners to bring Azure, Teams, to marketing cloud

In a surprising turn of events today, bitter Customer Relationship Management software rivals Microsoft and Salesforce have teamed up recently to combine strengths and provide better cloud scalability to customers.

More specifically, the Salesforce CEO and outspoken Microsoft critic wants the two companies to deliver new cloud experiences by integrating its noteworthy CRM technologies with Microsoft’s expansive Azure software and communications tool, Teams.

The plan is for Salesforce to build a new integration layer that gives “sales and service users the ability to search, view, and share Salesforce records directly” within Microsoft Teams.

“At Salesforce, we’re relentlessly focused on driving trust and success for our customers,” said Marc Benioff and Keith Block, co-CEOs, Salesforce. “We’re excited to expand our partnership with Microsoft and bring together the leading CRM with Azure and Teams to deliver incredible customer experiences.”

Furthermore, the partnership will see Salesforce move its Marketing Cloud to Azure allowing the company to focus on performance optimizations rather than trying to scale while also reducing onboarding times for their customers.

More importantly, Salesforce’s integration benefits from Azure’s global footprint and helps the CRM giant “address local data security, privacy and compliance requirements,” Microsoft’s cloud has already met in various international regions.

The move obviously was driven more by demand than an altruistic intent as a well-known customer of both companies responded to the integration news with the overwhelming approval of the merging.

“Marriott has more than 7,200 properties spanning 134 countries and territories, so driving efficiency and collaboration is critical,” said Brian King, global officer, Digital, Distribution, Revenue Strategy, and Global Sales, Marriott International. “The combination of Salesforce and Microsoft enables our teams to work better together to enhance the guest experience at every touchpoint.”

Much of this proposed integration is road mapped for 2020 with specific Microsoft Teams integration slated for late 2020.