Will Microsoft Viva Learning Reshape the Landscape of Learning and Development?

What is Viva Learning? | Viva Learning and Search | Viva Learning and the Future

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What is Viva Learning?

Microsoft's Viva Learning is an ambitious project to move all our learning resources into one integrated resource which Microsoft tell us will bring 'learning into one central hub' and allow us to 'seamlessly access content'. With Viva Learning users of Microsoft 365 will get learning recommendations and resources integrated within Microsoft Teams and powered by artificial intelligence which will analyse our working behaviours to make suggestions about our learning needs. These learning resources will be available from Microsoft-owned platforms such as LinkedIn Learning, Microsoft Learn and from content providers which partner with Viva Learning and Microsoft, as well as from the client organisation's own Learning Management System.

This will extend far beyond learning for Microsoft's own products and indeed one of the earlier learning resources available in beta covered the subject of infection control for dentistry.

What does Viva Learning mean for Search?

What interests me about this is the way that Viva Learning positions itself as a resource which takes the discovery of learning providers and content away from conventional Internet search and into a closed circuit of resources. Could it eventually mean a fundamental change to the way in which learning needs are fulfilled across the board perhaps?

If Viva Learning achieves its ambitions, will the need diminish to find learning providers through search engines such as Google (and even Bing for that matter)? And, could this even impact upon the use of (and searches for) free video learning content on YouTube (one of Google's subsiduaries)?

What on the one hand is an altruistic goal (to make learning a more integral part of work), is on the other hand perhaps an astute business decision by Microsoft to seize some market share from its rival Google.

By bringing learning resources under its own umbrella and also identifying learning needs as they occur, Viva Learning could potentially remove the need to break off and go to a search engine (or even to YouTube) to find the learning that we need.

We can perhaps also see evidence of the same strategy in some of Microsoft's recent rebranding exercises. It is possible to understand Microsoft's renaming of some of its products as a targetted attempt to disrupt conventional search. For instance, changing the name of Microsoft Flow to Power Automate and changing the name of Office 365 to Microsoft 365 could in the short term dislocate the thing searched for from the relevance of the results served up by search engines, especially when consumers are searching for a learning product by one name whilst providers are advertising it by another name.

What further confounds the matter is that by changing the name of Office 365 to Microsoft 365, Microsoft have changed a well-known product name into a name which is also their company name; something much more generic than one of their specific products. This is a significant disrupter of search since the familiarity of the Office brand name means that consumers will continue to search for courses on the product by this name for a significant time to come. Whilst at the same time a search for 'Microsoft training' is very non-specific. As a result of this, even some of the largest training providers have already resorted to calling Microsoft 365, 'Microsoft Office 365' in order not to lose out on potential search traffic.

If we look at the number of times different versions of other applications such as Microsoft Project and Microsoft Access have undergone name changes as well in recent years a pattern really starts to emerge.

This begs the question as to whether Microsoft is engaging in a deliberate strategy to make conventional searches for training products less reliable as part of a pincer movement with the launch of Viva Learning.

Viva Learning and the Future

We must also ask the question as to what this is going to mean for learning providers. If a significant market share of learning identification and provision happens on Viva Learning then there may come a time when all learning providers need to have their content available on Viva Learning (at the very least by having a presence on LinkedIn Learning) in order to maintain their visibility.

Such scenarios have become commonplace in the Gig Economy and we know for instance what can happen when a food delivery platform has access to the data of the takeaway restaurants that use it to connect with their customers. This data can then be analysed and used to go into direct competition with the companies that depend upon the platform.

Whilst Viva Learning undoubtedly provides some great opportunities both for its users and for training providers it will also be very prudent to keep a close eye upon how it impacts upon the wider training industry in the coming years. The future extent of Viva Learning's market penetration and it's future behaviour patterns could significantly re-shape the landscape of the training industry.

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