Microsoft is working on a IFTTT-like automation tool called Flow
Matt Weinberger / Business Insider :
Context & Ripple Effects
Flow's reveal closes the loop on an odd bit of Microsoft naming history: back in 2015, ZDNet reported the company was building a light-weight email app called Flow, and that project has evidently been repurposed into something else entirely — an IFTTT-style trigger-and-action automation tool. The Business Insider scoop lands one day before the product goes live, per related coverage of the launch.
What follows over the summer reads as a rapid multi-platform rollout rather than a stalled experiment: iOS arrived in June and the Android client shipped by mid-August, turning Flow from rumor into Microsoft's direct answer to IFTTT across mobile.
First-order effects
- IFTTT now competes head-on with Microsoft on its home turf of consumer-friendly trigger-and-action recipes — and against a rival that can bundle the same capability into Office accounts businesses already pay for.
Second-order effects
- Enterprise workflow vendors and integration tools face pressure from below, as Flow makes simple cross-service automation free or cheap for Office users who previously had no reason to touch this category.
Third-order effects
- If platform giants keep absorbing consumer automation tools, standalone services like IFTTT risk becoming feature checkboxes inside larger ecosystems rather than products in their own right.
The trend: Trigger-and-action automation is migrating from independent consumer startups like IFTTT into bundled features of big-platform suites, with Microsoft using Flow to pull it into the workplace.