100 INTERVIEW Revolutionising content management together Ian Story of Microsoft and Antti Nivala of M-Files discuss how their collaboration is aiming to bring the best of content management to users For years, executives from Microsoft and document management platform provider M-Files would meet across the aisles at industry events, often as competitors. Today, the story has changed. The two companies are now partners, collaborating to build integrated solutions to help businesses work more productively and securely. “All the years we would see each other at different events, we would be competing,” recalls Ian Story, principal architect for OneDrive and SharePoint at Microsoft. “I’m excited just to be sitting here now as partners.” For Antti Nivala, founder and CEO of M-Files, the partnership aligns with his initial vision when founding M-Files. “Right from the start, my core idea was to offer the best possible experience to end users,” he explains. “Most of the customers we work with use Microsoft tools as their digital workplace. So, it’s been important for me to make sure that M-Files integrates with Office tools, with the Windows operating system, and today with Microsoft 365 in the cloud.” That integration has reached a new level as M-Files enables users to co-author and edit documents simultaneously in Microsoft 365 desktop applications while the M-Files platform organises information, guides business processes, and automates security and compliance. “Co-authoring is very important for M-Files users,” says Nivala. “M-Files serves customers best when it’s not just the system of record, but also the system of work. Compliance becomes automatic. You can just do your work while everything else happens behind the scenes.” Story adds: “It provides 100 per cent of the native co-authoring features of Microsoft 365 – comments, mentions, presence awareness, working with Copilot – not partial functionality.” Underpinning these capabilities is Sharepoint Embedded, an API-only solution that enables app developers to utilise the Microsoft 365 file and document storage functionality. “The solution uses the core storage technology, compliance and security capabilites of SharePoint, but not the user interface,” says Story. “Users only interact through M-Files’ user interface. It’s the best of both worlds.” Co-authoring marks the beginning of what Nivala and Story envisage as a much deeper collaboration, with the development work the two companies have already done opening up new avenues for innovation. “We now have this tight integration between M-Files and Microsoft 365, essentially using Microsoft 365 storage for the content,” says Nivala. “That brings quite a lot of possibilities. There are so many use cases that are ideal for M-Files – from simple sync and share to highend document management. The partnership just makes a ton of sense.” For Nivala, the real value of the new partnership for Microsoft customers comes from the contextual information M-Files can provide. “We integrate with business systems like SAP and Salesforce, and use those business objects BY ALEX SMITH “ There’s a simplicity in knowing all of your content is in one place” IAN STORY, MICROSOFT
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