Microsoft confirms acquisition of Yammer

Bangalore,India: On June 25th, 2012, Microsoft announced that it had reached an agreement to purchase Yammer Inc., one of the leading provideers of enterprise-level social networking. Microsoft bought Yammer for US1.2 billion, and this signals Microsoft's seriousness in dominating the enterprise networking scene. Yammer Inc. is a company launched in 2008, which currently has over 5 million corporate users, and is used by almost 85% of fortune 500 companies. It offers social networking services within an enterprise, providing a secure and private space in which co-workers can share their ideas and their work. This seems to be a shrewd investment by Microsoft, especially as it will complement their existing productivity suite which include Office 365, Sharepoint and Skype. With the powerful sharing tools that Yammer would provide, the prospect of a collective productivity suite with all these components seems tantalizing. As of now, Microsoft is reassuring Yammer customers that the product will remain the same and there will not be drastic changes being made. However, the software giant did state that they will be looking to “accelerate Yammer's adoption alongside complementary offerings from Microsoft SharePoint, Office 365, Microsoft Dynamics and Skype. ”(Microsoft Press Release, June 25,2012). Although it will take at least 3-4 quarters to notice a fusion of Yammer into Office 365 or Sharepoint, enterprises will be expecting big things from Microsoft in the future.