Microsoft buys Yammer to protect SharePoint

Of course, it wasn't a secret that Yammer (the service that invented social intranet) - is a successful startup. But no one could imagine how successful it is. Microsoft is buying Yammer for as much as $1.2 billion. Most likely, it's too big price, but Microsoft has to overpay in order to protect its flagship product - SharePoint. We have already noted that after the rapid start, SharePoint has stopped in development. And lately two threats for SharePoint have appeared. The first threat is called "DropBox for business" - the new class of tools that sync files between computers and mobile devices. And the second threat - are these solutions for building enterprise social networks (Chatter, Yammer, Socialcast, Jive, etc.). For the first threat Microsoft has an answer - SkyDrive, but the social component in SharePoint it very weak.

And the recent social promises of Jared Sparano (Senior Director, SharePoint Product Management) didn't add optimism: "we at Microsoft are carefully studying the opportunities of social networking technologies in the workspace and in the next version - SharePoint 2013 - these tools will be further developed."

Now Microsoft has Yammer. But will be they able to seamlessly integrate this SaaS service in SharePoint, or it will go the Skype's way - the history will show.

See also: Top 10 Enterprise Portals