Office Graph is Bill Gates' First Act in New Role

The second coming of Bill Gates at Microsoft has already provided evidence that his new role will be anything but a quiet one. Many suggested that Gates new position as Technology Advisor was nothing more than just a figurehead role to help curb negative industry speculation over Satya Nadella being chosen as the new CEO of the company. Obviously Bill doesn't agree. Whether that was the intent or not, Bill has already rolled up his sleeves and "pressed" the Office 365 team to release Office Graph quickly.

Just days ago, news was floated that Microsoft is intent in opening up Office to more apps. This would be the first time the business application collection would see new product additions since it was actually pushed forward as a suite. I know I wondered about what apps could be missing from the suite and what might fit to make it an even more popular and powerful offering.

Office Graph is the first of a new series of Office apps, and it shows how Microsoft believes that business social and Big Data is the next step for Office. Office Graph takes the culmination of information supplied across the company through Exchange, Outlook, SharePoint, Office, Lync, and Yammer and reorganizes it in a way to make the data relevant and valuable to the business.

There is a catch, though. Office Graph is purely a Cloud-based service.

Office Graph is expected to be available to Office 365 customers in the second half 2014.