Businesses all over the world know that keeping a network is of the utmost importance. Not only do businesses need to be in contact with other businesses, but they need a way to keep their own business’s employee staff in conjunction with one another. Social media has helped businesses, everyday people, and even schools. In the business world, networking is often what people can thank for their success. Keeping up with competitors and keeping organization within a business is what enterprise social media is all about.
The enterprise social media site that has had everyone talking is Yammer. With over 5 million users in the corporate world, Yammer has proven to be a very successful website and a crucial tool. Microsoft, once again seeing an opportunity to build up the empire they’ve already created, has announced in their Microsoft News Center that they have acquired Yammer. Steve Ballmer, CEO at Microsoft says, “The acquisition of Yammer underscores our commitment to deliver technology that businesses need and people love.”
Microsoft has been working recently on building up certain components of their enterprise. They’ve created a portfolio of cloud services that is growing quite fast. Since social networking is the biggest thing on the web today, Microsoft knows that acquiring a site like Yammer will secure them some solid ground to keep them well in the game, though they would probably never have and issue with that.
Yammer began in 2008, helping local businesses with their social networking for free, but with a bigger goal in mind. With this new acquisition by Microsoft, their goals have been reached, with a cash payment somewhere around $1.2 billion. Along with that, functions at the Yammer offices won’t really change much, and Microsoft even assures us in their News Center post that the current CEO of Yammer, David Sacks, will still be the one that runs the ship and that employees will continue to answer to. Yammer will continue to be a complimentary service as well.
On the Microsoft blog, Kurt DelBane writes on how he has big expectations for this new addition to Microsoft’s cloud service portfolio. “Over time, I see opportunity for exciting new scenarios by adding Yammer’s stand-alone service alongside and integrated into our collaboration offerings with SharePoint, Office 365, Dynamics and Skype. I picture people being able to use Yammer to manage and expand their professional relationships, share and collaborate on Office documents, stay informed about content updates, and to seamlessly move from status updates and feeds into voice and video conversations.”
With Microsoft acquiring all of these services like Yammer and Skype, Kurt is correct in thinking that even bigger things are headed their way. Microsoft will continue to do great things in the future to bring the best in technology and services to the business world and consumers alike. With the brand new Windows 8 to look forward to along with all the new services Microsoft offers, it isn’t hard to see that Microsoft will continue to prosper for a long while.
