The acquisition of LinkedIn by Microsoft is a huge signal to all individuals and organisations to have an online profile as the two global professional giants come together. 

Satya Nadella describes LinkedIn as the social fabric and fully intends to deeply integrate this with all products including Microsoft 365. This would suggest that by not having an online presence you will be significantly disadvantaged from being included, differentiated and recognised within various Microsoft tools.

The full investor webcast is full of great illustrations of how Microsoft and LinkedIn will leverage each other and utilise individual brands. The overriding message suggests that having a profile and presence online is key for you and your organisation to take advantage. This can certainly be easily differentiated from the majority of LinkedIn profiles through content. 

I recently learnt about Cortana which is a personal assistant on your Windows phone. I was extremely impressed with the automation and level of intelligence from a brief play in Cambridge. True integration with LinkedIn will certainly revolutionise the way meetings are approached. With 60%+ of traffic to LinkedIn coming from mobile and the majority of professionals researching from mobile this provide Microsoft with another entry to the mobile market. Once again, if you have an online presence the ability for these tools to include you are increased. 

Another huge opportunity here is for Microsoft Dynamics to take on Salesforce for top spot. I have always used the LinkedIn plugin with SFDC and it will be interesting to see what happens to SFDC and other CRM vendors as this progresses, not to mention Sharepoint competitors.

For an organisation it will be imperative to ensure all employees engage and start to build their online presence, this will allow the most advanced organisations to have the greatest advantage as LinkedIn becomes integrated with Microsoft 365. 

Whilst I am an Apple user I am extremely excited to watch how this relationship will further empower businesses and individuals to become more efficient and innovative.