Microsoft continues to evolve into a company that plays nicely with competitors.

Today, the company announced that its Office apps for Apple iPhones and iPads now provide tools for opening and editing files stored on third-party online services from Apple and Box.com. And it unveiled a new Cloud Storage Partner Program that will let third party apps open and edit Office files via its internet-based Office Online service.

These are small changes, but they're part of an enormous shift for Microsoft, which has a history of working to ensure that Microsoft tools only worked with other Microsoft tools. Following the appointment of CEO Satya Nadella, the company has not only dovetailed its software third-party services, but also released software that runs on rivals' operating systems, including Apple's iOS.

Back in November, the company unveiled a partnership that lets Office apps directly save and sync files with Dropbox, and now it's expanding this same kind of thing to other services. Meanwhile, Box, Citrix, and Salesforce are working to build apps that can edit files via Office Online.