The release of Delve, the first application to use Microsoft’s Office Graph machine learning engine, will be remembered years from now as either the genesis of a revolutionary technology or as a fireworks-style launch that dazzled everyone only for a brief moment.

Whatever the future holds for Delve and the Office Graph, the stakes are sky high for Microsoft, its rivals and its current and prospective customers. So it’s important to pay attention to how Microsoft further develops the technology, how customers adopt it, how competitors respond to it and how enthusiastically — or timidly — partners choose to support it, if at all.

If Microsoft realizes its Office Graph vision — and it may take years to materialize — then the way information workers interact with business software and find digital information today will seem ancient and grossly inefficient. Microsoft might fly past competitors in the enterprise with a technology that creates a sort of cockpit that automates and simplifies for employees the use of their Microsoft and non-Microsoft software.

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