The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Yammer, described as the social network for the workplace, has agreed to sell itself to Microsoft for a whopping $1.2 Billion. Many people are asking: why?
Yammer is to Facebook what closed circuit TV is to cable. It’s a private social network meant for the office environment. Yammer integrates with SharePoint, SAP, Salesforce and other business applications making it an easy and seamless way to share information across your company. In addition to filesharing, it also features content collaboration which allows users to collaborate on documents in real-time with multiple authors.
What will Microsoft do with Yammer? One thought is that they will integrate it into Microsoft Office, making it more social and more of a competitor to Google Docs (now Google Drive). Microsoft Office generates more than half of Microsoft’s annual operating income. Currently, Google offers real-time content collaboration and file sharing/storage but you have to admit that it’s a pretty basic word processor. Having a fully functional Microsoft Word with social features such as chat, real-time group editing and cloud storage, among other things, is very appealing and might even make Microsoft “cool” again.
However, not everyone thinks buying Yammer will do great things for Microsoft. Financial analyst Trip Chowdhry of San Francisco-based Global Equities Research told Eweek.com: “If they acquire Yammer, it wouldn’t really do anything for Microsoft.” He added, “It’s just like their lack of a mobile strategy. The market has already been taken.” He went on to say that Microsoft is “late to the party” and that they should focus on doing things that haven’t been done before.
Microsoft is set to make a “big announcement” on Monday. Many believe this is where they will confirm their purchase of Yammer, debut their new tablets, and introduce the world to Windows 8. After that, it will be interesting to see if Google beefs up the features on their online word processors and spreadsheets.
Here at BestVendor, we use Google Docs to create, share and store documents and HipChat for messaging. What does your office use? Would you switch to Microsoft Office equipped with Yammer? Let us know in the comments.
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