The following excerpt is from an article found on TechCrunch.com. This article was written by Sarah Perez.
Following an earlier integration with Dropbox, Microsoft announced today it’s further opening up its Office software suite to work with other third-party cloud services, starting with an update to its Office iOS applications that will allow access to iCloud and Box.
The support is being added by way of “file picker” integration, which takes advantage of the iOS software’s ability to open files stored in other locations.
For end users of Microsoft Office, the change means they’ll now be about to open, edit and save documents stored in third-party services from within the Office apps, the company explains in a blog post announcing the news. While iOS is first to receive the update, Microsoft says similar functionality is being added to the universal Windows 10 applications as well as the Office for Android applications.
The added support for third-party services is notable for Microsoft, which historically had operated as more of a closed company that tried to keep its customers inside its own ecosystem. But that’s been changing as of late – Microsoft has been embracing other platforms not only with the launch of Office for iOS late last year, and more recently, Outlook for iOS and Android, for example, but it has also recently passed 100 iOS and Android applications in total.