New report says LinkedIn has put plans to relocate its data centers to Azure on hold

Even though Microsoft acquired the business-themed social network LinkedIn for $26.2 billion way back in 2016, the company mainly uses its own hardware and software to run its website and operations. Today, a new report claims that a previous plan to switch LinkedIn over to Microsoft's Azure cloud services has been put on hold.

LinkedIn announced plans back in 2019 to switch over to using Azure, which it said would take a number of years. It had already been using Azure for some features, including machine learning translation and ways to remove inappropriate content from the service. At the time, LinkedIn stated:

Moving to Azure will give us access to a wide array of hardware and software innovations, and unprecedented global scale. This will position us to focus on areas where we can deliver unique value to our members and customers. The cloud holds the future for us and we are confident that Azure is the right platform to build on for years to come.

However, CNBC is now reporting, via unnamed sources, that those transition plans have been put on hold. The story says that part of the reason for this switch in plans was because LinkedIn wanted to use its own software tools instead of the ones provided by Microsoft's Azure cloud services. The report added that LinkedIn is currently constructing a new data center to meet its current and future needs.

A LinkedIn spokesperson stated to CNBC that the service is still using Azure for some of its features:

We are using both Azure to complement our infrastructure needs and further investing in our data centers . . . This includes our running 100 employee-facing applications on Azure, leveraging Azure FrontDoor and ongoing work to consolidate our datacenter locations that are currently spread across multiple buildings under a single roof. Azure has been crucial to support and scale collaboration and productivity for our teams and to deliver value to our members.

LinkedIn has recently been adding more generative AI features to its service, following the trend of its Microsoft parent company. That includes adding a way to let AI generate a message to a company's hiring team and a chatbot designed to help people find out if a specific job opening is a good fit.