Microsoft updates SharePoint with Office Graph feature that analyzes data from Office apps, with iOS and Android apps coming later this quarter
your foundation for the future Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet : New Microsoft SharePoint mobile, OneDrive Universal Windows Platform apps to start rolling out in May Brad Stephenson / WinBeta : SharePoint seeks to be the future of the mobile and intelligent intranet Vishal Srivastava / The Tech Portal : Microsoft Releases Office Online Server To Let Businesses Host Office Online Files In Own DataCentres Office Blogs : Office Online Server now available Office Blogs : The Future of SharePoint — Today's post was written by Jeff Teper … Susan Hanley / Network World : The Future of SharePoint is All About You Matt Weinberger / Business Insider : Microsoft is struggling to close a $2 billion gap with Amazon Bertel King, Jr / Android Police : Microsoft Announces SharePoint Mobile Apps, Android Version Coming Later This year Dina Bass / Bloomberg : Microsoft Ups Rivalry With Google, Box With New Sharing Software Emil Protalinski / VentureBeat : Microsoft launches Office Online Server, lets businesses host their own Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote apps Pradeep / MSPoweruser : Microsoft releases Office Online Server bringing Office Online experience to on-premises Sean Chan / MSPoweruser : OneDrive for iOS gets SharePoint Online integration with version 7.0 Caroline Wall / FierceMobileIT News : Microsoft updates SharePoint, will release mobile apps starting this quarter resources.office.com : The Future of SharePoint — Come celebrate SharePoint … Liam Cleary / SharePoint Pro : SharePoint Server 2016, Project Server 2016 and Office Online Server hit general availability Barb Darrow / Fortune : Microsoft Wants to Make SharePoint More Likable Tweets: @wsjd : Microsoft is betting a new version of SharePoint can stand out by tapping an information source its rivals lack. http://www.wsj.com/... Microsoft SharePoint / @sharepoint : SharePoint. The future starts now. #FutureofSharePoint http://blogs.office.com/... http://twitter.com/... Maarten Visser / @mvisser : The Wall Street Journal reveals the new Office 365 Sites homepage http://www.wsj.com/... #FutureofSharePoint http://twitter.com/... Andrew Cunningham / @andrewwrites : soon you will be able to experience the horrors of SharePoint on any platform you want http://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
This is the payoff of a year-long rebuild of Microsoft's collaboration stack. The SharePoint Server 2016 preview from last August introduced the hybrid-search and large-file plumbing, and today's event makes that server generally available alongside Office Online Server for on-premises hosting — while the cloud side gets the Office Graph, which mines activity across Office apps to make the intranet 'intelligent'.
The other half of the announcement is mobile: after testing universal Office apps on Windows Phones, Microsoft is promising native SharePoint apps for iOS and Android this quarter — a notable platform pivot for a product historically tied to Windows and the browser. The follow-through came fast, with the free iOS SharePoint app shipping in June.
First-order effects
- Enterprise IT now has a concrete choice: stay on the newly GA'd SharePoint Server 2016 and Office Online Server in their own datacentres, or move to the cloud tenant where Office Graph personalizes content — the hybrid search bridge is what keeps both paths viable.
- iOS and Android users get first-class SharePoint access within the quarter, ending the browser-only experience for field and mobile workers.
Second-order effects
- Google's G Suite push is the named competitive frame here — an 'intelligent' intranet plus cross-platform mobile apps is Microsoft's answer to Google's claim on collaborative work, forcing the comparison onto data analysis rather than document editing.
- Bundling graph-driven intelligence into SharePoint raises the bar for the newer chat-based entrants; two years later Microsoft's own free Teams tier shows how aggressively it would layer collaboration products on top of this same base.
Third-order effects
- Office Graph is the structural seed of Microsoft's current play: treating the work suite as one analyzable activity graph rather than separate apps — the same logic that culminates in Copilot surfaces like the Office apps on Apple Vision Pro and, earlier, SharePoint Spaces in mixed reality, where 400K organizations were using SharePoint, up about 100% year over year.
- If the pattern holds, intranets consolidate around platforms that own the activity data — vendors without a cross-app graph compete on features alone, and enterprise buyers increasingly pick the ecosystem, not the point product.
The trend: Microsoft is converting SharePoint from a document repository into an intelligence layer over all Office activity, with mobile reach and mixed-reality extensions as the delivery mechanisms.