Microsoft and DocuSign have announced a deal that will see Office 365 users able to digitally sign and send documents using the service without ever needing to print, scan or copy a document on paper ever again.

The companies announced the move on Monday, with DocuSign’s Jesper Frederikson, general manager of EMEA, telling The Next Web that it’s just the start of things, with future features and integrations planned:

We’re taking two flagship cloud services and doing a tight integration, we’re not just doing it at a tactical level… It’s the launch of a strategic relationship that will see good functionality come out in the first iteration and we’re committed to continuing to innovate and bring even more functionality by integrating our respective services.

From today, the DocuSign application will be embedded directly into Office 365 so Word, Outlook, SharePoint Online or SharePoint Server (on-premise) users can sign and stamp documents from within those applications.

As well as integrating across the platform, DocuSign has also adopted the Windows Azure Active Directory so customers can use single sign-on, rather than needing separate credentials to use the platform.

Documents are automatically saved in Microsoft’s recently renamed cloud storage service OneDrive.

Signing documents using DocuSign is free for all Office 365 users, and there’s the option to send up to five documents for free. If you want to carry on and send more digitally signed documents after that, you’ll need to pay up.

Frederiksen told TNW that pricing varies according to the size of the organization, but that an average small-to-medium sized business would end up paying somewhere around £300 – £400 per year for unlimited digital signing and sending of documents.

Confirmation of the integration comes just days after DocuSign is said to be looking to raise up to $100 million in a deal that values the company at more than $1 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal‘s sources. Clearly, an ongoing agreement with Microsoft for integration into platforms like Office 365 is hardly likely to hurt these talks.

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