M-Files and Microsoft: A New Era of Document Management

The content management market is already large – over $73 billion by our latest forecast. Now, a groundbreaking partnership is now reshaping how you manage documents.

M-Files – a leader in intelligent document management – has teamed up with Microsoft to create a first-of-its-kind solution that combines M-Files’ strengths with the full power of the Microsoft 365 platform.

Announced today in a joint press release, this strategic partnership means that M-Files will natively use Microsoft 365’s backend (via SharePoint Embedded) as its storage engine.

In plain terms: your documents in M-Files can now live directly inside your Microsoft 365 cloud, unlocking a wealth of benefits for your business.

This isn’t just another integration – it’s a native union of two platforms that until now have been separate. Let’s break down what this partnership means for you, and why it’s generating so much excitement in the industry.

What This Partnership Means for You

M-Files is now using Microsoft’s SharePoint Embedded as its content repository. SharePoint Embedded is a new API-only version of SharePoint that acts as a behind-the-scenes content storage service for apps. While I was at Microsoft, we launched it to let partners and developers build custom document-centric applications on the Microsoft 365 backbone, without needing to build their own file storage from scratch.

M-Files is the first document management system (DMS) to take advantage of this. In the past, if you chose a third-party DMS like M-Files, your documents were stored outside of Microsoft 365. No longer. Now, M-Files content lives in your own Microsoft 365 cloud tenant (separated neatly into a dedicated partition via SharePoint Embedded).

Many organizations currently store content using Microsoft 365. Customers have already set up content management for retention, sensitivity, and search, especially for Copilot. Previously, building custom applications or relying on third-party repositories required separate configuration for search, compliance, eDiscovery, retention, and other similar functions for each isolated area. This announcement allows users to manage information in Microsoft 365 as well as M-Files through a unified interface.

What’s the big deal? It means you no longer have to choose between an industry-specialized solution and the Microsoft 365 platform. You get the best of both worlds, seamlessly.

Key Benefits: Microsoft 365 + M-Files = 🚀

Let’s look at how this new unified approach can benefit your organization:

• Fully Native Co-Authoring & Collaboration: Because documents are stored in Microsoft 365, you and your colleagues can co-author in real time using familiar Office tools (Word, Excel, PowerPoint online or desktop). M-Files content can be shared and edited just like any file in SharePoint or OneDrive, with the same smooth experience you’re used to.

  
  

• Enhanced Search & “Findability”: Ever struggle to find a file that was stored in some external system? Now, your M-Files documents are discoverable through Microsoft Search and Copilot, just like your other Microsoft 365 content. Since the content resides in your tenant, Microsoft’s search index can natively crawl it.  Moreover, M-Files’ own intelligent metadata means documents are well-described, further improving search accuracy. In short, no more content silos.

  
  

• AI-Powered Insights with Microsoft 365 Copilot: One of the most exciting aspects is the AI angle. Microsoft 365’ Copilot can now leverage your M-Files content directly. Because your documents sit within Microsoft 365, Copilot can “see” those files (with proper permissions) and use them to answer questions or generate content.

  
  

• Agentic AI: In addition, since Copilot Studio can already connect to SharePoint, you now have an easy path to developing low code agents that interoperate with Microsoft content and M-Files content.

  
  

• Unified Security and Compliance: Content security and regulatory compliance are non-negotiable for businesses. With this partnership, your M-Files documents remain inside the Microsoft security boundary. In practice, this means all of Microsoft 365’s robust security controls apply: encryption at rest, advanced threat protection, Entra identity management, multifactor authentication – the works. Even more importantly, your compliance policies set in Microsoft Purview (Microsoft’s compliance suite) extend to M-Files content. You can apply retention labels, legal holds, audit trails, eDiscovery, Data Loss Prevention (DLP), and sensitivity labels to documents that M-Files manages, just as you would for any SharePoint content. Compliance rules only need to be defined once, and they’ll uniformly cover content whether it’s accessed via M-Files or via Microsoft tools.

  
  

• Maximized ROI on Microsoft 365 Investments: Chances are, your organization already invests significantly in Microsoft 365 – it’s a backbone for email, collaboration, and more. By adopting M-Files with this new integration, you leverage that existing investment to the fullest. There’s no duplication of storage or parallel infrastructure needed. For IT, this is great news: fewer disparate systems to maintain, and a clear architecture that aligns with your Microsoft strategy. For the business, it means users adopt the solution faster (because it ties into tools they already use every day like Office, Teams, Outlook). And you avoid the cost and complexity of custom integrations – M-Files and Microsoft have done that heavy lifting for you.

  
  

• Seamless Integration with Business Apps: Since your content is in Microsoft 365, you’ll find it easier to integrate documents into other workflows and applications. M-Files already had connectors into Office, Teams, and even Dynamics 365. Now those integrations become more seamless because everything sits on one platform. For example, if you’re in Microsoft Teams discussing a project, you could search and pull up a file managed by M-Files without leaving Teams – and know it’s the latest version and secured properly. Or if you have a line-of-business application (say a CRM or an ERP) that needs to fetch or store documents, it can call Microsoft’s APIs to place files into the M-Files managed repository.

More Than Technology: Field Enablement and Alignment

Technology alignment is crucial. Be important to watch the ongoing alignment across the combined sales and support teams . One lesson that my experience in the information management industry (both at AIIM and Microsoft) has taught me is that technology partnerships succeed only when the people and go-to-market strategy align as well.  Microsoft’s field teams need to understand when to position M-Files on top of M365 for a customer’s content needs, and M-Files’ teams need to fluently articulate the Microsoft 365 value that comes with their solution. By telling a coherent story, they can avoid confusion and truly address customer pain points together.

Looking Ahead: A New Trend in Content Management?

Could other content management or business application providers follow the same path? It’s quite possible that we’re witnessing the start of a broader trend. In fact, industry analysts are already speculating about it. Forrester’s principal analyst Cheryl McKinnon noted that “unstructured data – aka content – is gold to AI, and Microsoft wants it.”

I think within the next year we’ll see at least one other enterprise content management (ECM) vendor or line-of-business (LoB) vendor adopt SharePoint Embedded as their back-end repository, similar to what M-Files has done. The reasoning is clear: as basic document storage becomes a commodity service, content-focused software vendors will differentiate through intelligent features and vertical solutions – and many will find it logical to offload the storage layer to Microsoft’s cloud for the robust infrastructure it provides.

From Microsoft’s perspective, this strategy (“no file left behind”) feeds more data into their cloud (which, in turn, makes services like Copilot smarter), and it keeps customers within the Microsoft umbrella for all content needs. For partners like M-Files, it removes a huge barrier (they don’t have to convince you to store your critical data on a separate island) and lets them focus on what they do best – providing intelligent solutions on top of that data. Ultimately, it’s a win-win-win: for Microsoft, for partners, and most importantly for you, the customer.

Conclusion: Embracing the Future of Content Management

In practical terms, if your organization uses M-Files (or is considering it), this announcement should come as very good news. It means your Microsoft 365 and M-Files investments will reinforce each other rather than operate in parallel. The partnership validates a philosophy that many in the content management world have been advocating for years: break down the silos, and meet users where they work. By embedding content services into the tools people already use, you drive adoption and get better outcomes.

If you’ve been dealing with fragmented information or hesitant to adopt advanced AI because your content was all over the place, now is the time to lean in and explore what this new solution can do for you.

The document management landscape is evolving quickly, and this partnership is a clear sign that the future is about convergence – bringing specialized solutions and mainstream platforms together. It’s an exciting development, and if you’re a business or IT leader striving for better information management, it’s definitely one to be optimistic about and to learn more about.