Microsoft Graph is yours, not theirs

This week at Build, the company announced that Microsoft Graph now has a feature that allows it to connect to business data. The way Microsoft describes the chart in press materials is clever: it places users at the center, with applications and devices in a constellation around that kernel. It's about creating a rich database focused on people and relationships. Calendars and documents are "artifacts" and desktop applications are "rich canvases". And that depends on a lot of data.

The problem with Microsoft Graph is that it is not a graph. These are many graphics and the company might have had to name "Graphs" in the plural for clarity. But even that does not describe it correctly. It's a database, but it's not monolithic; some graphs are extracted from "global" data, which means publicly available information repositories. Some are built from your company's data and others are extremely personal.

"Maybe we should rename" your graphic "or something," half-joked Rob Howard, chief marketing manager of Microsoft 365 applications, in an interview. This would be at least closely related to MyAnalytics, which is a good example of a personal graph. MyAnalytics, which also received an update during the creation, is an Office 365 tool designed to help you understand how you use your time at work, including the time you spend on concentration and the work you do. . in your time after normal hours.

Whose data?

This level and type of feedback requires a lot of data. "Microsoft Graph […] Is this massive data set a secure, compliant recording of cloud productivity activity, "Howard said. "Look, the average company has 2 billion nodes in this chart. These are just incredibly valuable information about how people work. "

This raises the extremely important issue of privacy and property. What data is used for the chart (ie the charts), who can see what information about it and who does it belong to? Privacy is a hot topic in the data world, and nobody wants to feel like Big Brother is watching. Does the chart give Microsoft too much information and too much power?

"This [data] does not belong to us, "assured Howard. "It belongs to our customers, individuals and organizations." In addition, the data rules come from your company and not from Microsoft. "[Graph] allows you to recover this data and, in a secure and refined way, to keep it within the boundaries of your property, security and compliance, and to combine it with other business data in order to To obtain information. "

And when it is aggregated and made anonymous, you can create templates on it. Microsoft Graph does not "see" your data anymore than you left it, and for the purposes of the chart, it does not want the kind of data you would not want to see. In any case, according to Howard, it is "physically impossible" to tap into a person's individual data.

"If it's individual knowledge, we want to respect your privacy. In an interview with Microsoft Build 2019, Malavika Rewari, Senior Product Marketing Manager for Microsoft Office Intelligence[MyAnalytics] extracts data from your emails, meetings, online discussions, [and] co-authoring, documents, "and more." So, all Office 365 data – these are metadata, so it's not the content, but rather the time you sent the email, its subject or recipient, "she said.

Structurally, your MyAnalytics chart is not necessarily a subset of your company's business chart, and your company's business chart is not a subset of the overall chart. A MyAnalytics report is created for you as an individual, based on your data extracted from your company's rules for the chart. But your company does not see the data created by the chart for your MyAnalytics report.

It's the ML

Let's go back to these 2 billion nodes produced by an average company: to feed Microsoft Graph, your company must aspire a lot of data. The main objective is to obtain business information that can help companies understand how their employees work, their models and preferences, the results of their teams, the feeling of their interactions with others. companies with regard to a sale, the skills required. for a given project to be successful, and so on. It is an effort to improve, but there is also a nuance of surveillance. Microsoft does not have your anonymized data, but your company may be.

Howard pointed out, however, that this is simply because if you use a cloud service and company computers, your data – e-mails, documents, web searches – are always available to some extent. If you receive your MyAnalytics report via the company's Outlook mail, your company can review it, but again, the report is an aggregate. It tells you how you spend your time and its quality, but it is neither granular nor specific.

In any case, this is not the purpose of this data, and it is certainly not useful for the graph. Howard said, "The graphical data connection is to allow you, as an organization, to collect data about how your organization works, to import it into Azure Data Factory, combine it with your own business data, and then to use your toolchain. choice to glean ideas about how your organization works, what are the effective work models, [and] what can you do more than. "

In other words, Microsoft needs data for its graphics so that it can perform machine learning and provide actionable information to a company or individual worker. This information is relevant to your business and derived from your aggregated and anonymized data, which Microsoft does not have. This is the business model.