Rumors indicate that Microsoft (MSFT) is in discussions to purchase Yammer, a provider of social networking software for businesses and institutions. Reports suggest the company is expected to pay $1.2 billion for Yammer.
The move shows Microsoft could be looking to add more social and collaboration tools to its current enterprise portfolio. The company’s SharePoint has been a success among CIOs, but it was designed and built in the pre-Facebook, pre-cloud era. As noted by Richard Edwards, principal analyst at Ovum, Microsoft needs to address the need of employees that are increasingly living their personal and work lives through social media.
“So the idea of introducing similar kinds of tools into the workplace seems to make sense from a communication and collaboration point of view,” Edwards noted.
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Yammer was launched in 2008 and was designed to exploit social, mobile and cloud technologies. Many people compare it to a Facebook for the workplace – and several companies have used it as a collaborative tool. Forrester Research recently ranked Yammer as one of the three top enterprise activity streams (social software products anchored around the stream or feed of posts) along with Salesforce.com’s Chatter and Tibco’s Tibbr.
Microsoft last year bought Skype for $8.5 billion, which could allow Microsoft to add the most successful global messaging and VoIP calling product and brand to its portfolio.
“One of the most significant benefits of having Skype in the Microsoft product portfolio is the integration of Skype into the Windows Phone 7 mobile platform. While Skype had dabbled in mobile via a relationship with Verizon Wireless, it was limited. If Microsoft enables the Skype platform to all smartphones, the world will finally have a universal instant messaging client that will enable IM chat between billions of people, most of them on cell phones,” noted Gerry Purdy, principal analyst at MobileTrax, in a recent RCR Wireless News Analyst Angle column.
