Reported Yammer Acquisition Seen as Beneficial for Microsoft - ramseythipper82

If Microsoft buys Yammer, as unofficial press reports argue, Susan Gautsch hopes the Grizzle team won't lose the qualities she has gratifying in the several years her employer has been a customer.

The Yammer team has been attentive to customers and quick to ameliorate and extend its product, said Gautsch, e-learning director at Pepperdine University's Graziadio School of Business, which has been using the endeavor social networking tool since 2009.

"I've always appreciated their rapid [product] developing and they've ever been very responsive to their customer base," aforesaid Gautsch, who's a member of Yammer's customer advisory panel.

Citing unknown sources, Bloomberg rumored Thursday that Microsoft is in advanced talks to acquire Yammer for about US$1 billion. Microsoft and Yammer declined to scuttlebutt.

The newsworthiness has generated reactions connected social media channels from Yammer customers, industry observers, partners and competitors, with the debate focused on what the future would hold for Yammer's staff and product with Microsoft Eastern Samoa parent fellowship.

What's clear is that the attainment would help oneself Microsoft squawk up the enterprise social features in coaction products wish SharePoint, Exchange, Lync and Office.

Products like Whine allow organizations to offer employees Twitter-like and Facebook-like functionality in a workplace stage setting. They let employees ordered up profiles, DO microblogging, participate in discussion forums and receive bodily function stream notifications well-nig what their colleagues are doing.

The promise of such products is that they can improve the way employees intercommunicate and collaborate past complementing e-mail, IM and other more traditional tools. The products can be integrated with else business applications and managed by the IT department.

Microsoft and other vendors selling coaction stacks, like IBM and Cisco Systems, have been incorporating endeavour friendly networking (ESN) functionality into their products. Enterprise application vendors are doing likewise, including Salesforce.com, SAP and Oracle.

But Microsoft is behind competitors in building domestic ESN features into its products, said Gartner psychoanalyst Larry Cannell.

"Microsoft has the weakest ethnic play in the market," he said. "With Yammer they would in real time become a very strong rival in the social workplace."

Yammer's package is swarm-based, indeed it would make the most sense for it to become a component of Office 365, Microsoft's Web-based collaboration and e-chain armour suite, said Forrester Research psychoanalyst Fleece Koplowitz.

"I'd assume Yammer would continue a standalone avail that could be consumable by Office 365 components," He aforesaid. Office 365 includes online versions of Exchange, Lync, SharePoint and Office.

Yammer has 5 million corporate users and its clients let in over 85 percent of the Hazard 500. It has raised US$142 million in funding since its founding in 2008 and has astir 300 employees.

Yammer offers a basic free adaptation of its software, and tercet fee-based tiers.

Poshly, a 10-person Net inauguration based in Late York City, with faculty in California, uses the uncommitted version for casual communication, polls, bookmarking and other tasks. Founder and CEO Doreen Bloch finds Yammer very useful for her company but has been thwarted that some features that were antecedently free no longer are.

"I hope that's not a communicative of more restrictions to come along free accounts. For proto-stage startups, I hope Yammer does continue to keep its many a free features, which are healthful until we decide to upgrade. If the acquisition means removal of the free alternative entirely, we may consider moving to other tools," she said via e-send.

At the Graziadio School of Business, which pays for the package, Yammer is used by between 2,500 to 3,000 people, by and large students, but besides faculty and alumni.

It uses Yammer for student communication, alumni community building and teaching, and information technology's especially effective for connecting users in different locations. The school has basketball team campuses in Southern California and one in Northern California, also as not-traditional students, such as temporary executives, who don't often attend classes personally.

The school uses a assortment of collaborationism tools, including Microsoft software package, just Gautsch said "Yammer is the gum."

Juan Carlos Perez covers enterprise communication/collaboration suites, operating systems, browsers and general technology breaking news program for The IDG News Armed service. Follow Juan happening Twitter at @JuanCPerezIDG.