Author Archives: Matt Kapko

Microsoft’s $26.2 billion acquisition of LinkedIn has officially closed, and the CEOs at both companies are sharing some of the early plans for integration across product lines.

The largest deal in Microsoft’s 41-year history will combine the “world’s leading professional cloud and the world’s leading professional network,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella wrote in a blog post. Both companies share a common mission to “help professionals transform how they work, realize new career opportunities and connect in new ways,” he added.

During the coming months, LinkedIn and Microsoft say they will be integrating products, especially in areas where Microsoft’s scale can be an asset. Nadella and LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner spotlighted eight areas the companies are going to pursue immediately:

●    LinkedIn identity and network in Microsoft Outlook and the Office suite
●    LinkedIn notifications within the Windows action center
●    Enabling members drafting resumes in Word to update their profiles, and discover and apply to jobs on LinkedIn
●    Extending the reach of Sponsored Content across Microsoft properties
●    Enterprise LinkedIn Lookup powered by Active Directory and Office 365
●    LinkedIn Learning available across the Office 365 and Windows ecosystem
●    Developing a business news desk across our content ecosystem and MSN.com
●    Redefining social selling through the combination of Sales Navigator and Dynamics 365

The initial integrations seem sensible, relatively straightforward, and represent a “logical list of early to-dos to be focusing on as the two companies become integrated,” says Jan Dawson, chief analyst and founder of tech research firm Jackdaw. “Some of this is particularly simple and can probably happen very quickly, while other elements will be longer-term projects.”

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Facebook plans to expand the capabilities of Workplace, its social network for business, with an app platform that lets enterprises integrate third-party apps. These “custom integrations,” which allow organizations to personalize their versions of Workplace with familiar productivity apps and other services, was announced at a TechCrunch conference yesterday. Facebook later confirmed the news. 

When Workplace launched in October, Facebook emphasized its core strengths that draw 1.71 billion people to the site every month. In Workplace, the company built a separate business communication service on the same foundational features. The new custom integrations bolsters Facebook’s pursuit in the enterprise by offering a more comprehensive platform for integrating SaaS services. 

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Google this week announced a new service for businesses, called App Maker, that’s designed to take some of the heavy lifting out of application development. The company says it wants to lower the barrier to entry for enterprise apps with a low-code development framework that can be used to build custom apps for business. 

Enterprises that use G Suite, Google’s set of productivity apps, can now request early beta access to the service. You simply drag-and-drop modules into a visual editor with built-in templates and customize their apps using HTML, CSS, JavaScript and Google’s own material design visual framework, according to the company.

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Apple this week signed on another large business customer through its partnership with IBM. The deal will see Finland’s largest airline use iOS apps for technical operations and customer experience. Finnair says it carries more than 10 million customers each year between 70 cities in Europe, 17 in Asia and three cities in North America. 

Finnair has a team in place at IBM’s “MobileFirst for iOS Garage,” which operates as a collaborative development hub for iOS enterprise apps. IBM says its MobileFirst for iOS customers have direct access to the world’s largest concentration of developers that use Swift (Apple’s programming language for iOS, macOS, watchOS and tvOS), designers, integration experts and enterprise iOS consultants. 

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The mobile advertising game, which has been a bit like a match of Whac-a-mole in the past, finally turned to favor the house. Marketers today reach their intended audiences in the United States with more than half of all mobile ads, according to a new report from Nielsen. 

[ Related: 1 in 4 desktop owners use ad blockers ]

During the second quarter of 2016, people of the age and gender marketers targeted viewed 60 percent of mobile ads, according to Nielsen. Marketers reached their intended audiences 49 percent of the time on mobile devices during the same period in 2015, the company says. Nielsen’s report is based on 40,000 U.S. mobile campaigns across sites, apps and services.

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Apple’s Mac and Apple II computers have been used in classrooms for more than 30 years, but cheaper hardware from rival Google is putting the squeeze on Apple’s dominant position in education. The two companies target education from very different perspectives that play to their respective strengths. Google’s objective is also slightly different than Apple’s, because it primarily focuses on selling hardware for students that promotes its software services, while Apple pursues a more hardware-specific approach along with tools for teachers, according to a set of analysts who follow the education tech market.

“The momentum is definitely swinging in Google’s favor,” says Van Baker, research vice president, Gartner. “Chromebooks are doing quite well in the education sector.” 

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