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Microsoft to further integrate Yammer with Office this summer

Microsoft's SkyDrive Pro and Office Web Apps technologies will be tied more tightly into its Yammer enterprise-social-networking offering as of summer 2013.

Mary Jo Foley
Mary Jo Foley has covered the tech industry for 30 years for a variety of publications, including ZDNet, eWeek and Baseline. She is the author of Microsoft 2.0: How Microsoft plans to stay relevant in the post-Gates era (John Wiley & Sons, 2008). She also is the cohost of the "Windows Weekly" podcast on the TWiT network.
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Mary Jo Foley
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Buried in a press release on Yammer momentum are a couple of new details about Microsoft's plans for integrating Yammer with SkyDrive Pro and Office Web Apps by summer 2013.

From the February 20 press release:

"SkyDrive Pro was previewed at the recent SharePoint Conference, and Yammer is implementing it as the underlying platform for file storage. In addition, Yammer is enhancing the ability to preview and edit files directly within Yammer feeds using Office Web Apps. The combination of these capabilities will dramatically enhance a user's ability to create, collaborate, share, and discover content within Yammer. These enhancements are planned for availability in summer 2013."

SkyDrive Pro is the new name for SharePoint Workspace (for all intents and purposes). SkyDrive Pro is where Office 365, SharePoint Online, and SharePoint 2013 on-premises users can store and collaborate on documents and other files. Office Web Apps are the Webified versions of Microsoft's Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.

Starting next week, on March 1, Microsoft will be making available Yammer/SharePoint products and services at new price points, as company officials announced last fall. Those offerings will be:

  • Yammer Basic Standalone: Free
  • Yammer Enterprise Standalone: $3 per user/per month
  • SharePoint Online (Plan 1) + Yammer Enterprise: $4 per user/per month
  • SharePoint Online (Plan 2) + Yammer Enterprise: $8 per user/per month
  • Office 365 E Plans 1-4 + Yammer Enterprise: $8 - $24 per user/per month

(All these Plans 1-4 references are part of Microsoft's Office 365 plans/pricing, for those wondering about the nomenclature.)

Microsoft and Yammer officials also said late last year that in the "immediate future," the Yammer and SharePoint product families will be unified via a single ID/sign-on, shared document-management capabilities and feed aggregation. I'm thinking, based on the Office Web Apps integration piece unveiled today, that the "immediate future" might be summer 2013, though no one from Microsoft is confirming this.

In the longer term, Yammer will be integrated with other Microsoft products and services from an e-mail, instant-messaging, and videoconferencing perspective. Microsoft officials are not commenting on when users should expect Yammer-Skype, Yammer/Lync integration -- or the triple whammy of Yammer/Skype/Lync convergence.

Microsoft bought enterprise social-networking vendor Yammer for $1.2 billion in June 2012. At that time, Microsoft officials said they would integrate Yammer's technology with Office, Office 365, Dynamics (CRM), and Skype.

This story originally appeared on ZDNet under the headline "Microsoft to tighten further its Yammer-Office ties this summer."