Microsoft Acquires Yammer

Microsoft Corporation and Yammer Inc. have announced an agreement in which Microsoft will acquire Yammer, which provides an enterprise social networking service, for $1.2 billion. Yammer will then be made a part of the Microsoft Office Division, and will continue to report to the current CEO.

Following the acquisition, Yammer will still develop its standalone service. At the same time, Microsoft will accelerate Yammer's adoption with other complementary offerings from Microsoft SharePoint, Dynamics, Office 365, and Skype.

"Microsoft didn’t really have what many would consider a social software offering until now," says Blair Pleasant of UCStrategies. "While some people call Sharepoint a social solution, it’s missing many of the capabilities that I generally associate with social software. Yammer is one of the leading social software products on the market, and will add tremendous value to Microsoft and its customers. I hope to see integration of Yammer with Lync in the near future, since the integration of social software and UC is an important step toward the next stage of UC, or what I call 'collaborative communications.'"

The acquisition is currently awaiting regulatory approval. For more information, visit www.microsoft.com.