Why integration with Microsoft 365 is the winning formula for content management

If you’re reading this, you’ve probably felt the pain. Your organization runs on Microsoft 365—everyone’s collaborating in Teams, storing files in SharePoint, sharing via OneDrive. It’s where work happens.

But as collaboration has exploded, so has complexity. Files live everywhere. Versions multiply. Your compliance team is sounding alarms about governance gaps. And now leadership wants to know: How are we going to leverage AI when our content isn’t under control?

Here’s the truth: Microsoft 365 is exceptional at empowering productivity and collaboration. It just wasn’t built to handle the full scale of enterprise content governance on its own. That’s where OpenText comes in—adding the structure, compliance, and connected intelligence that take Microsoft 365 to the next level.

Together, OpenText + Microsoft deliver intelligent content management—combining the tools your people love with the governance your business needs.

The Microsoft 365 dilemma

Let’s be honest about what’s happening in your environment. Your teams have adopted Microsoft 365 enthusiastically—maybe too enthusiastically. Workers are using an average of 11 apps, nearly double what they used just a few years ago. Creating Teams for every project, saving files in OneDrive, and scattering critical documents across dozens of SharePoint sites.

The result? Content sprawl at scale.

When your next audit comes, or when legal needs to pull every document related to a client engagement, or when you’re trying to enforce retention policies—that’s when you realize you need deeper governance, the kind that spans applications, processes, and repositories while still working natively within Microsoft 365.

Microsoft 365 delivers powerful tools for productivity and collaboration. OpenText amplifies that strength — extending it with enterprise-scale governance, process connection, and security designed for the way large organizations work.

Why “rip and replace” isn’t the answer

Some vendors will tell you to replace Microsoft 365 entirely. That’s not realistic, and you know it. Your organization has made a significant investment in the Microsoft ecosystem. Your employees are trained on it. Your workflows depend on it. With more than 320 million monthly Teams users worldwide, Microsoft 365 is embedded in how business gets done. The smartest move isn’t replacing—it’s extending.

The smarter approach? Extend Microsoft 365 with OpenText content management solutions that deliver information seamlessly in the environment your people already use.

This is where OpenText’s integration with Microsoft 365 changes the game. Instead of forcing your teams to work in yet another system, OpenText brings intelligent content management directly into Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, and Dynamics 365. Your users stay in their familiar applications while you gain enterprise-grade governance, compliance, and process integration behind the scenes. It’s integration without disruption — your users stay in their flow, while IT gains the oversight, compliance, and peace of mind it needs.

How integration with Microsoft 365 transforms work

Think about the challenges you’re facing: content scattered across multiple systems, no single source of truth, compliance gaps that keep you up at night. Here’s how OpenText changes that equation:

Control content sprawl without killing collaboration

OpenText doesn’t restrict collaboration—it channels it.

At the heart of every OpenText Microsoft integration is the Business Workspace — a structured hub that unites content, people, and processes. Each workspace connects seamlessly to Microsoft Teams, giving users the freedom to collaborate while IT maintains control.

Business Workspaces bring together the content, workflows, metadata and people tied to specific projects, cases, or business processes—all accessible directly within Microsoft 365 applications. The result? Collaboration that stays productive and compliant.

Connect content to business processes

Your content doesn’t exist in isolation. A contract relates to a sales opportunity. An engineering drawing connects to a project. A compliance document links to a regulatory requirement.

OpenText integration with Microsoft 365 bridges those connections, linking your content to the systems that run your business, including SAP, Salesforce, Dynamics 365, Guidewire and beyond. The result is information that’s always in context, always findable, and always connected to the processes that matter.

With the upcoming OpenText Content Aviator integration for Microsoft Copilot, users will be able to query and analyze business-critical content stored in OpenText repositories using natural language prompts, directly from Copilot. Acting as a trusted agent, OpenText Content Aviator retrieves governed content and surfaces context-rich insights without replicating data or exposing it outside OpenText governance controls.

Achieve comprehensive governance and compliance

Many Microsoft 365 environments start strong but struggle to scale governance across complex, multi-system landscapes. You might have retention policies and sensitivity labels in place—but what about records management across heterogeneous systems or litigation holds that span multiple repositories?

With OpenText integration, your teams can continue collaborating in Microsoft 365 and keep essential, business-critical content stored securely in OpenText’s repository. This creates centralized information governance with automated lifecycle management for content from Teams, Outlook, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, along with hundreds of other repositories and file formats managed together and accessible from anywhere.

By unifying governance under a single framework, OpenText brings enterprise-grade compliance and control to your Microsoft environment—without disrupting how your users work.

Real-world proof: It works at scale

When organizations combine OpenText and Microsoft, the results speak for themselves.

The Widewaters Group, a diversified real-estate organization, replaced three legacy systems with a single OpenText content platform integrated into Microsoft 365. Today, more than 2,000 employees collaborate seamlessly across Teams and SharePoint while OpenText manages governance in the background. The result? A 350% boost in productivity, faster access to information, and complete confidence that every document is secure, classified, and retrievable when needed.

In Australia, Jemena, an energy infrastructure leader, used OpenText to connect its Microsoft 365 environment with SAP and other business systems—bringing order to a complex network of projects, suppliers, and compliance requirements. The integration streamlined collaboration across departments, reduced manual handling, and delivered a single source of truth for operational data and documents.

And as Global Data Strategist and former ARMA International Chair, Ryan Zilm puts it, “Most organizations aren’t short on tools—they’re short on control.” His experience helping customers rein in content sprawl highlights a universal truth: pairing Microsoft 365 with OpenText’s governance, automation, and AI-ready architecture gives enterprises the confidence to grow without losing control of their information. 

Making the business case

If you’re an IT leader comparing vendors or an information manager who needs to influence budget holders, here’s your business case in three points:

1. Maximize your Microsoft investment: You’ve already invested in Microsoft 365. OpenText amplifies that investment by adding deep content management, structured collaboration, and governance — without forcing users to change how they work.
2. Reduce risk and complexity: Through Zero Trust information governance, OpenText automates the content lifecycle and applies policy-based protection that works across all your content, inside and outside Microsoft 365.
3. Enable AI and digital transformation: Good AI starts with trustworthy content. OpenText structures and secures your information so GenAI can deliver accurate, explainable results that your teams can rely on.

The path forward

The question isn’t whether you should use Microsoft 365 or OpenText. The question is: Are you ready to move beyond Microsoft 365’s limits and unlock its full potential?

The winning formula is integration, not replacement. It’s OpenText’s enterprise content management capabilities working in harmony with Microsoft’s productivity tools. It’s giving your users the experience they want while giving your organization the governance it needs.

Ready to see how this works in practice? Explore OpenText Content Cloud integrations for Microsoft 365 or discover the full OpenText business integrations portfolio—and see how seamless integration with Microsoft 365 helps unlock AI-ready productivity.

Your Microsoft environment is powerful. With OpenText, it becomes unstoppable.