Microsoft Gives Yammer Users a Big Break

Microsoft opened its SharePoint conference with the announcement that it is integrating Yammer and Sharepoint. Microsoft acquired Yammer, the social networking component, earlier this year. Combining it with its own document management and collaboration product is not the only good news for businesses; Microsoft is also slashing the price from a monthly fee of $15 per user, to a starting price of just $3 per user, per month.

“While the new SharePoint has a lot of great social capabilities, we acquired Yammer to take social networking to the next level,” said SharePoint VP Jeff Teper.

For now Yammer and Sharepoint will be merged in a single ID/sign-on with combined feed aggregation and document-management capabilities. In the future, possibly with the next version of Office, they will combine video conferencing, instant messaging, and email. 

"On pricing, we're going to be pretty bold," Teper added.

Beginning on March 1, 2013, Microsoft will be offering the following services:  

• Yammer Basic Standalone: free
• Yammer Enterprise Standalone: $3 per user/per month
• SharePoint Online (Plan 1) + Yammer Enterprise: $4 per user/per month
• SharePoint Online (Plan 2) + Yammer Enterprise: $8 per user/per month
• Office 365 E Plans 1-4 + Yammer Enterprise: $8 - $24 per user/per month

Microsoft acquired Yammer in June 2012 for $1.2 billion. At the time of the takeover, Microsoft officials announced that they intended to integrate the enterprise social networking product with Skype, Dynamics, Office and Office 365. Company officials also said they would keep up the provision of Yammer as a standalone cloud service.

“Yammer provides a universal conversation layer. You'll start to see this in SharePoint. You'll also start to see SharePoint objects, people and documents in Yammer, too. This (integration) will get more seamless. The lines will blur between these things,” said Teper. He added that Microsoft is hoping that Yammer will enable more of the company’s users to migrate to the cloud faster.

Microsoft has announced plans to increase the number of SharePoint apps that will be available through the Office Store. The company has more than 700,000 developers working on this project.

Microsoft has also introduced a range of new SharePoint apps for Windows Phone, Android and Windows 8. The company is also in the process of developing SharePoint apps to run on the iPad and iPhone. These are expected to be available in 2013, according to company officials. (CU) Link