Microsoft turning to Yammer to beef up social tools, reports say

14.06.2012
Microsoft in serious discussions to buy Yammer, an enterprise social collaboration company, according to reports.

Citing unnamed sources, that Microsoft may be willing to pay more than $1 billion for Yammer. An agreement could be reached as soon as tomorrow, the report said.

Acquiring Yammer would significantly boost Microsoft's place in the , analysts said..

To date, Microsoft has positioned its SharePoint Web application platform as a social collaboration tool, they added.

"Regardless of what Microsoft might do with Yammer, assuming the rumors are true, the company will immediately make up a great deal of lost time relative to its rivals, which have been in the market with much more mature enterprise social networking capabilities," said Brad Shimmin, an analyst at CurrentAnalysis.

Enterprise social collaboration vendors include Jive Software, Novell and .