April 24, 2026
BlogMicrosoft Viva: Rapid Planned Disassembly?
Microsoft has rebranded Viva Connections as part of SharePoint, according to Executive Vice President and longtime SharePoint leader Jeff Teper. It’s an on-trend change, because Microsoft has been systematically dropping parts of Viva since 2023, and I expect more this year.
Why? The short answer is that the Viva brand has done its work: It gave Microsoft a toehold in the Employee Experience (EX) tech market and prevented any competitor from emerging that might compete with Microsoft collaboration products.
To see why that might be a concern, go back to Feb. 2021, when Viva was announced. That was roughly a year after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Executives and HR departments were focused on EX, trying to find effective ways to get messages to employees, monitor their behavior, and keep them collaborating effectively while many were working from home. SharePoint was traditionally Microsoft’s keystone product for those tasks, but Teams had emerged as Microsoft’s main communications channel, and products acquired with LinkedIn, VoloMetrix, and Yammer continued to pursue their own corners of the EX puzzle.
The solution: Create a brand to give the appearance of a unified platform and use licensing to bundle the actual disparate grab-bag of products with SharePoint and Teams, in the Microsoft 365 suites. Both tactics weaken the apparent value of competitors because Microsoft 365 customers just keep asking themselves, “Don’t I already own half of Microsoft’s EX solution already?”
Now, thanks to vaccines and hybrid work, the immediate crisis is over. Generative AI looks like the next place competitors to Microsoft 365 products could emerge. In five years, Microsoft has done the technical work to give Viva parts connections with Teams and SharePoint. It also has done an increasing amount of work to tie Viva with Microsoft 365 Copilot. And multiple Viva premium add-on licenses have popped up to pay for all that integration.
Microsoft could now remove the Viva brand, but it probably won’t. After all, anything that costs US$12 per user per month probably needs a name.
