Microsoft is betting big on the social enterprise. As
we and others reported a couple of weeks ago the company is acquiring Yammer, which has been described as “Facebook for Enterprises.”
Microsoft said earlier today that it was buying Yammer for $1.2 billion in cash. Yammer will become part of the Office division and current CEO David Sacks will continue to run the team and the product, which will continue to have a stand-alone identity. Sacks will report to Kurt DelBene, head of Microsoft’s Office Division.
Over time Microsoft will integrate Yammer more deeply into a variety of its products, including Skype. This is what Yammer CEO Sacks said in a blog post today:
As a Yammer customer, you will continue to get a secure, private social network—delivered with the same focus on simplicity, innovation, and cross-platform experiences. Over time, you’ll see more and more connections to SharePoint, Office365, Dynamics and Skype
Kurt DelBene echoed that sentiment, adding:
Over time, I see opportunity for exciting new scenarios by adding Yammer’s stand-alone service alongside and integrated into our collaboration offerings with SharePoint, Office 365, Dynamics and Skype. I picture people being able to use Yammer to manage and expand their professional relationships, share and collaborate on Office documents, stay informed about content updates, and to seamlessly move from status updates and feeds into voice and video conversations.
The acquisition of Yammer can be seen partly as a response to the rise of the social internet and partly as a response to Google Docs and its enterprise collaboration capabilities.
How Microsoft merges or integrates its existing enterprise collaboration tool SharePoint with Yammer remains to be seen.
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