One year on, Microsoft's enterprise users bet on Yammer

BANGALORE, INDIA: Precisely a year after the acquisition of Yammer, an enterprise social network provider, by Microsoft Corporation, its top users, such as Manhattan Associates, The Aricent Group, Godrej Group, Capgemini, Synechron, Reckitt Benckiser and Electronic Arts - a relatively new user - are vouching for its efficacy in ensuring tangible return in areas like greater cross-functional collaboration and open communication, improved customer response times, and increased business agility.

"Enterprise social has transformed how we work, breaking down organizational siloes, making us more open and collaborative, and enabling us to be more responsive to our customers," said Dawn Gartin, collaboration manager, Manhattan Associates Inc.

"As both a Microsoft SharePoint and Yammer customer, we're excited about Microsoft's vision and how the products are coming together to offer one uniform social experience, which, for us, is the key to getting work done."

Since the acquisition, Microsoft (MS) says its enterprise social momentum has accelerated in all areas, including new users, paid customers, user engagement, innovation, and the ecosystem of partners selling and connecting to the Yammer platform.

Over the last twelve months, MS reports that registered users on Yammer have grown by more than 55 per cent to nearly 8 million and that paid networks increased more than 200 per cent year-on-year. Yammer user activity - messages, groups and files - has approximately doubled year over year.

"The continued boom in Yammer's growth is validation that enterprise social represents an important trend in the way people want to share, learn and connect at work, similar to how they're interacting in their personal lives," said David Sacks, Yammer co-founder and corporate vice-president, Microsoft Office Division.

"During the past year, Yammer has unlocked new opportunities to share the benefits of enterprise social through Microsoft's global sales organization and product ties with key communication, collaboration and cloud productivity offerings, such as Microsoft Office 365 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM. We see nothing but continued potential in enterprise social as a cornerstone of the future of work."

Customers and partners bet on Yammer

Apparently, partners also continue to invest in Yammer, connecting third-party applications to Yammer that add line-of-business capabilities and additional value for organizations using Yammer. The number of partners in Yammer's App Directory has nearly doubled since its launch in October 2012, and the number of developers building on Yammer has increased more than 70 per cent, says an MS statement.

Meanwhile, Yammer announced on Friday integration with online influence tool Klout, which allows Yammer users to publish their public Klout scores and expertise directly on their Yammer profiles. In addition, Yammer administrators can elect to turn on a deeper integration with Klout to produce internal, Yammer-specific Klout scores for employees based on their activity within a company's Yammer network.

Advancing the enterprise social road map

According to MS, during the past year, Yammer has continued to make significant product updates, including message translation capabilities, improvements to file collaboration, platform updates such as embeddable feeds and the 'Like' and 'Follow' buttons, and continued development on various mobile platforms.

Yammer also continues to deliver on its outlined strategy to provide a social layer across Microsoft Office and third-party applications. MS believes that, in order for social to become truly mainstream in the workplace, it needs to be a part of the applications people use every day. To deliver on that vision and past roadmap announcements, Microsoft is delivering interoperability with Office 365 with these newly released features:

* Yammer newsfeed for SharePoint Online and Office 365. Yammer now works even more deeply and seamlessly with Office 365 and SharePoint Online, allowing customers to replace the SharePoint newsfeed with Yammer.

* New Yammer application in Office Store. Available by the end of June in the OfficeStore, the Yammer application will allow customers to easily embed Yammer group feeds into SharePoint sites, creating a connection between groups and sites to deliver the best of Yammer and SharePoint.

In the coming months, MS has plans to release a number of Yammer, SharePoint and Office 365 updates to deepen connections between the services and enable greater collaboration. Although Microsoft has already talked about delivering an improved user experience and single sign-on, new planned features include advancements in search and e-mail:

* Improved e-mail interoperability. New capabilities will make it easier for users to follow and participate in conversations across Yammer and e-mail

* Expanded Yammer messaging and external communication. Expanded functionality helps meet everyday communications requirements, such as seamless external communication and enhancing real-time directed messaging

* SharePoint search integration. Integrated search makes it easier to find information across Yammer and SharePoint quickly

Microsoft will use its rapid development approach to provide ongoing enhancements to create connected experiences across Office 365 that combine social, collaboration, e-mail, instant messaging, voice, video and line-of-business applications in innovative new ways.