CEO Jeff Weiner’s note to employees - Microsoft acquires LinkedIn
LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional social network, will now be a part of Microsoft, after the latter announced an acquisition. Microsoft-LinkedIn’s deal is close to $26 billion in an all cash transaction making it one of the biggest deals in the history of the technology world, valued slightly higher than Facebook’s acquisition of WhatsApp.
Satya Nadella in his note to Microsoft employees wrote there will be more synergy between LinkedIn and Microsoft’s products, hinting a possible syncing between Office 365 and LinkedIn.
His note said, “Along with the new growth in our Office 365 commercial and Dynamics businesses this deal is key to our bold ambition to reinvent productivity and business processes. Think about it: How people find jobs, build skills, sell, market and get work done and ultimately find success requires a connected professional world. It requires a vibrant network that brings together a professional’s information in LinkedIn’s public network with the information in Office 365 and Dynamics.”
He also explains how Microsoft has transformed under Satya Nadella and is a “more agile, innovative, open and purpose-driven company.”
“It was that latter point that first had me thinking we could make this work, but it was his thoughts on how we’d do it that got me truly excited about the prospect,” writes the LinkedIn CEO.
The LinkedIn CEO’s letter also talks of how the professional social network plans to scale by using the power of Microsoft’s ecosystem. “Think about things like LinkedIn’s graph interwoven throughout Outlook, Calendar, Active Directory, Office, Windows, Skype, Dynamics, Cortana, Bing and more,” he says.
