Microsoft today said its $1.2 billion acquisition of
Yammer has resulted in record growth for the cloud-based provider of enterprise
social networking. At the same time, Yammer's key rival NewsGator plans to
extend the reach of its enterprise social networking platform beyond
SharePoint.
In a vague news release announcing the growth of Yammer,
Microsoft disclosed that sales quadrupled last quarter and the total user base
grew to seven million. During the quarter, 290 new customers added Yammer
including GlaxoSmithKline, SABMiller and TGI Fridays, among others.
Since the deal closed last year and Yammer was folded
into the Office Division, Microsoft has said little about how it will integrate
Yammer into SharePoint. What Microsoft has revealed is that it will integrate
Yammer with SkyDrive Pro, the cloud-based storage Microsoft is offering with
SharePoint 2013 and Office 365. Yammer will also give SharePoint users the
ability to preview and edit SharePoint files from their Yammer news feeds via
Office Web Apps.
These two features, slated for release this summer, will
make it easier for users to find and share information in the Yammer interface.
While Microsoft hasn't said how and when it will more tightly integrate Yammer
into SharePoint, NewsGator does not see it as a threat. NewsGator has a large
installed base of large enterprise customers (many with tens of thousands of
employees) and the company will start to become less focused on SharePoint as
its primary platform, as reported by Computerworld last week...
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