Microsoft and Adobe Systems have forged a new friendship in the cloud.
On Monday, Adobe, the force behind Photoshop and Illustrator software packages, named Microsoft (MSFT) Azure the “preferred cloud platform” for its various online marketing and creative services software. Adobe Creative Cloud, for example, includes PhotoShop, Illustrator and other software used by marketing and ad professionals to make attractive advertising campaigns, marketing collateral and other content.
Microsoft, in turn, dubbed Adobe (ADBE) Marketing Cloud (which includes analytics and other perks) as its “preferred marketing service” for Microsoft Dynamics 365 business applications.
Under the Adobe-Microsoft deal, the two companies will work together on data integration so customers can can work across Adobe Marketing Cloud and Dynamics 365 business applications while leveraging mutual data and analytics services.
However, this agreement is not exclusive so it’s unclear how much traction either company will get out of this. Adobe already offers some of its services on Amazon Web Services, so that will not likely change. Adobe also announced a sort-of-similar co-marketing deal with SAP (SAP) two years ago.
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The move comes as the three major cloud infrastructure providers—Microsoft, Amazon (AMZN), and Google (GOOG)—compete to put get more software companies to use their respective clouds.
Salesforce—a long-time Microsoft (MSFT) partner and competitor, for example—recently announced a multi-year, $400 million plan to use Amazon Web Services to backstop new Salesforce (CRM) applications going forward.
Dynamics is Microsoft’s line of sales, accounting, and inventory management software that competes with various Salesforce products.
Microsoft executive vice president Scott Guthrie is expected to elaborate about the partnership as Microsoft Ignite, the tech giant’s conference for information technology professionals, commences in Atlanta on Monday.
Note: This story was updated to mention Adobe’s 2014 deal with SAP.