Yammer will encounter problems after being acquired for $1.2bn (£768m) by Microsoft, according to Stephen Rahal, communications director at Yammer's social business competitor Igloo Software.

Igloo provides social enterprise solutions to mid-market customers including Deloitte and the Prostate Cancer Charity.

In an interview with Computing, Rahal said the acquisition would benefit Igloo, and raise questions internally at Yammer.

"The acquisition was great validation for the market - the fact they paid $1.2bn for a social software company to add those capabilities is validation for what we're doing at Igloo.

"However, if you look at Microsoft and Yammer they really have completely different go-to market design philosophies. Yammer embodies the very definition of anti-Microsoft. That is in terms of agile development, frequent updates and their implementation process," he added.

Rahal said Microsoft is playing catch-up in the social enterprise arena, and that is why it was attracted to Yammer.

"With Microsoft, it takes a significant amount of time to receive the latest updates and that is part of the challenge to the SharePoint offering because they started to add some social capabilities in 2007 then 2010 and are expected to do so in 2013, but they are still behind. This market moves so quickly, it is a rapid development process - they can't keep up and that is one of the reasons for the Yammer acquisition," he explained.

But he predicted that cultural difference will mean the relationship might not be harmonious.

"The underlying technology and philosophy between Microsoft and Yammer is so different, the whole approach to development to service their customers is different. Integrating different philosophies can be extremely difficult and often leads to sacrifices - Yammer could lose its agility, and that is one of the primary attractions of a start-up company," he said.

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