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Report: Microsoft In Talks to Acquire Social Network Provider Yammer

by Jason Gumpert
Editor, MSDynamicsWorld.com

Microsoft Corp. is in talks to buy enterprise social network provider Yammer Inc., according to a report by Bloomberg.

According to the report, Microsoft could pay more than $1 billion for the company, and a deal could be inked tomorrow. Bloomberg is citing two people familiar with the deal, who declined to be identified because the negotiations are private.

The companies already have a close relationship. In April, the companies announced that Yammer was integrated with Microsoft Dynamics CRM, joining a field of offerings that enable updates from Dynamics CRM in a company's social activity stream. So acquiring Yammer seems to make sense because it would give Microsoft its own enterprise-class social-networking tools to add to the suite of products it offers customers.

Bloomberg points out that the Yammer acquisition would follow other recent purchases of social media companies. Recently, Salesforce.com Inc. purchased Buddy Media Inc. for $745 million, gaining social-marketing tools and Oracle Corp. recently purchased Vitrue Inc. and Collective Intellect Inc., two companies that analyze data on social-media sites -

Yammer was launched in 2008 by David Sacks, the former chief operating officer at PayPal Inc. Used by more than 200,000 companies, including Ford Motor Co. and Nationwide Insurance, Yammer also integrates with applications including AffinityLive, Badgeville, Box, Expensify, GageIn, Kindling, Microsoft SharePoint 2010, Moreover Technologies, NetSuite, Planview, Salesforce.com, SAP, Sparqlight, Spigit, Subscribe-HR, TripIt and Zendesk.

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About Jason Gumpert

As the editor of MSDynamicsWorld.com, Jason oversees all editorial content on the site and at our events, as well as providing site management and strategy. He can be reached at jgumpert@msdynamicsworld.com.

Prior to co-founding MSDynamicsWorld.com, Jason was a Principal Software Consultant at Parametric Technology Corporation (PTC), where he implemented solutions, trained customers, managed software development, and spent some time in the pre-sales engineering organization. He has also held consulting positions at CSC Consulting and Monitor Group.

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