Microsoft to buy Yammer for $1.2 b

Microsoft has announced a billion-dollar deal to buy start-up Yammer which specialises in social networks for businesses.

Microsoft had said yesterday that it will pay $1.2 billion in cash for Yammer, which will become part of the US technology titan’s Office Division.

“The acquisition of Yammer underscores our commitment to deliver technology that businesses need and people love,” said Microsoft chief executive, Mr Steve Ballmer.

“Yammer adds a best-in-class enterprise social networking service to Microsoft’s growing portfolio of complementary cloud services.”

Yammer was launched in San Francisco in 2008 and enables companies to make private networks that let employees communicate Twitter-style while keeping exchanges away from public viewing.

Yammer has more than five million users, including workers at 85 per cent of the Fortune 500 companies, according to Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft.

Microsoft said that it planned to promote adoption of Yammer’s service tied to complementary offerings of software or services such as SharePoint, Skype and Office 365.

“When we started Yammer four years ago, we set out to do something big,” said Yammer chief executive, Mr David Sacks.

“We had a vision for how social networking could change the way we work,” he continued.

“Joining Microsoft will accelerate that vision and give us access to the technologies, expertise and resources we’ll need to scale and innovate.”

A key attraction of Yammer for Microsoft was that unlike rival services sold by business software firms such as Oracle or Salesforce.com, Yammer spread virally by being free for people to use to collaborate with co-workers.

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