Brian Proffitt provides his viewpoints toward speculations that Microsoft may acquire Yammer. With SharePoint's pricing model and lack of "social" intregrated within the product, Proffitt also mentions how companies are seeking alternative solutions that are less expensive and more social such as Igloo.
Microsoft is reportedly set to acquire the Yammer business social network for an estimated $1 billion. The deal would give a much-needed social network injection to its SharePoint business collaboration platform.
Yammer - with an estimated valuation of $500 million - makes business-oriented social network tools for internal company sharing and discussion centered on blog posts and automatically generated content (such as notifications that a document is ready to edit or a sale has been closed).
The companies aren't talking, but this kind of software should be highly attractive for Microsoft, as it tries to move from being perceived as an old-school desktop software provider to being the source of modern, connected, social-media-aware solutions.
SharePoint Is the Key
One key to that transition is the company's flagship corporate collaboration platform SharePoint. And by Microsoft's own admission, social tools are still weak within SharePoint - now, and in the upcoming 2013 version as well.
SharePoint began adding social media capabilities with the release of SharePoint 2010, but in April Jon Barrett, Microsoft Australia's solution specialist of business productivity, told Australia's Image and Data Manager that "the improved new social media features in Wave 15 would not match the richness of solutions such as Newsgator Social Sites." (Wave 15 is the internal Microsoft code name for the SharePoint 2013 release.)
That's a big problem for Microsoft, especially if it wants SharePoint to remain a dominant business collaboration platform. SharePoint's comparatively high price and the rise of more mobile-connected workers is driving customers to look at less-expensive, more social platforms like Igloo and Alfresco.
Social Must Go Mobile
Social features like sharing, microblogging and instant approval make internal collaboration easier for computer users, and they are regarded as critical to mobile users who don't have the bandwidth or tool set to create or collaborate on content. Social tools can make workflows a lot more frictionless for mobile workers.
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1 Comment
A timely post, indeed. The "going mobile" component is fundamental here - integrating a software more easily with the gamut of hardwares out there will determine the accessibility of a collaboration platform. And, while IGLOO is pushing towards android and apple developments, the entire series needs to give surgical thought to the UI. I currently use the Blackberry APP and its helpful, to a degree. But a lot is wanting here....!
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