In the newest episode of Polaris, produced by Synozur, host Chris McNulty spoke with M-Files president Ryan Barry and Microsoft principal group product manager Ian Story about their companies’ growing partnership.
The discussion centred on how the collaboration is tackling one of the biggest challenges for modern enterprises: managing the explosion of unstructured content.
The global content management market is already worth $73bn and is expected to expand further as enterprise data surges towards 175 zettabytes by 2025, M-Files stated. Emails, documents and files are overwhelming organisations, creating a strong demand for intelligent and scalable solutions to make sense of the growing volume.
For many businesses, the traditional dilemma was whether to commit to a specialised content management system or to rely entirely on Microsoft 365. The new alliance between M-Files and Microsoft eliminates that trade-off.
M-Files’ metadata-driven platform is now available directly inside Microsoft 365, enabling advanced customisation alongside native collaboration. SharePoint Embedded provides the storage foundation, with built-in Office co-authoring, Teams integration and enterprise search — all supported by Microsoft’s compliance and governance framework.
This integration is also paving the way for more effective use of artificial intelligence. By bringing semantic clarity and structure to data, M-Files creates an environment where Microsoft’s AI tools can deliver accurate and valuable insights. Ryan Barry summed it up: “A document management system is basically a structured approach to your unstructured data. That’s how you make AI work for you — garbage in, garbage out”
User adoption is another critical piece of the puzzle. By embedding M-Files’ capabilities within the familiar Microsoft 365 experience, employees can continue working in the apps they know best, while compliance and governance are handled in the background. Barry explained: “The reality is, the lowest common denominator tends to prevail. Whatever is easiest for users is what happens. This partnership makes the right way the easy way.”
The conversation closed with a look ahead at what’s next: industry-specific content solutions, deeper AI integration and a shift from viewing content management as a burden to seeing it as a competitive advantage. Ian Story emphasised the connection between language and AI: “Language is the rocket fuel of AI, and language lives in documents. By bringing all your content into one intelligent system, you’re filling your AI’s tank with high-octane fuel.”
Read the daily FinTech news
Copyright © 2025 FinTech Global
