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The worlds largest database of professionals numbering upwards of 400 million users has just been bought over by Microsoft Corp.

The buy over of LinkedIn, costing an astronomical 26.2 billion USD which was announced on Monday, is the largest acquisition by Microsoft Corp to date.

The business-oriented social networking service first started operations in May 2003 and used mainly by professionals for networking purposes.

In what looks like an effort to revitalise Microsoft and its offerings, Chief Executive Satya Nadella hopes the move will generally bolster Microsoft’s revenue position. He sees the deal as a way to open new horizons for Microsoft Office suite and LinkedIn who are currently experiencing saturated markets.

Bridging two parts of the professional world. The work tools and the networking tools.

Will it work though?

From the onset it does look promising. For instance, connecting Office directly to LinkedIn could help attendees learn more about one another personally from invitations in their calendars. Sales representatives on Microsoft’s Dynamics software for managing customer relationships could pick up useful tidbits of background on potential customers from LinkedIn data.

Business leaders too are looking forward to benefits from the tie-up. Tech companies “are looking for ways to get even more out of social media,” said Steve Phillips, chief information officer of Avnet Inc., electronics supplier that uses Office 365.

The deal marks the highlight of Mr Nadella’s career to reshape Microsoft. He says their focus is specifically on ‘insights’ and ‘cloud-platforms’.

At Big Community we are fascinated by the Big Data possibilities here. Microsoft has a powerful array of Big Data and Machine learning tools at its disposal. At the same time they are about to own the worlds largest database of professionals who are constantly updating their linkedin home pages with sentiment, content, blogs and announcements. Apply Big Data Analytics to this equation and the possibilities for collaboration, building virtual professional teams and sourcing hidden talent just opened up in a way that could be game changing.

We will follow this closely.

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