Microsoft Graph is a cloud platform that provides access to data and services across Microsoft 365, including Office, Teams, Outlook, Azure Active Directory, and many other SaaS products, as well as third-party cloud services. It is centered around the user, with many sets of data, such as mail, tasks, files, contacts, and more, available in one interconnected system. To achieve this, Microsoft Graph has more than 3,500 unique resource types and thousands of relationships between them.

 

Potential Users:

Microsoft Graph enables professional developers and “makers” to build solutions ranging from enterprise-scale applications and services to niche departmental business process apps. By making it possible – and easy – to work with many Microsoft data sets, Microsoft Graph fuels an ecosystem of custom applications and drives adoption and usage of Microsoft’s corresponding services in a way that individual siloed systems or workloads cannot.

 

Why Microsoft build Microsoft Graph?

The motivation for Microsoft Graph APIs was to create a unified programmability surface and make it easy for developers to incorporate Microsoft services into their apps, increase developer productivity, and reduce maintenance costs by offering APIs that will be more durable, thus creating a thriving ecosystem of developers that enhance and customize our products.

 

Approach of the Initial Deployment:

Microsoft Graph was originally created to solve fundamental problems that prevented ISVs, LoBs, and SIs from building cloud-centric solutions. These initial barriers have been largely addressed, and the goals of Microsoft Graph have grown in line with customer expectations: we aim to unify data access across “all” Microsoft services.

 

Value Proposition:

The value of this API and platform unification extends beyond responding to immediate customer pain points and represents a greater opportunity. As more data sets are brought together under Microsoft Graph, we can realize actual value for each workload and the overall developer ecosystem by driving serendipitous deepening of developer (and user) engagement.

Microsoft Graph started as the API for Microsoft’s “productivity ecosystem”, focused on Microsoft 365 and evolved to include SaaS products across Microsoft. Today, it provides access to data from multiple services and has more than 500 million monthly active users of first-party applications built on Microsoft Graph.

Developers benefit from a consolidated API surface that delivers data in a consistent way and simplifies access to rich cross-workload data. Users benefit from a unified identity model and a shared user experience for discoverability and usage of applications, facilitating access and management.