Does the Yammer Deal Validate Enterprise Social Media?
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Neudesic is clearly a Microsoft shop, though
Vosough says it integrates with non-Microsoft business applications, too. It
also delivers Pulse in cloud and on-premise environments. Koplowitzs profile
of Neudesic states that it integrates not just with Microsoft SharePoint and
adds more features, but also with Lync for unified communications and with
Microsoft Dynamics for CRM along with enterprise resource planning (ERP) in the
cloud.
Vosough says he thinks the acquisition of
Yammer by Microsoft will bring greater attention to all players in the
enterprise social media market. He cited another Forrester report that put the
size of the enterprise social media market at $6.4 billion by 2016. In
addition, a survey showed that only 21 percent of business decision makers in
firms of 100 employees or more frequently use collaboration software in their
business groups or departments. Translation: Theres room for everybody to
grow.
The news of this acquisition is going to
educate more potential customers of the value of enterprise social networking,
Vosough said.
But the dynamics change when a smaller
companys partner becomes their competitor, said Koplowitz.
Now that Yammer will become part of
Microsofts sales and marketing channels, the preference will be for Microsoft
to push sales of Yammer, he said. The one situation in which a Microsoft person
will offer something other than Yammer is if another product offers a feature
the customer wants, but that Yammer doesnt offer.
Therell still be opportunities for partners
to fill white space, but primarily, Microsoft sales people will have the
incentive to sell Microsoft products, said Koplowitz. Microsoft as a sales
channel changes dramatically for the partners.
Other companies profiled in the Forrester
report include Salesforce.coms
Chatter, which like Yammer, is a cloud-only provider. Salesforce made a
name for itself as a CRM cloud platform provider, Koplowitz wrote, but has
stepped up its promotion of Chatter as the next big growth opportunity for the
company.
Of the tibbr offering from Tibco, the report
noted that for a company with such a deep reputation for middleware, Tibco has
managed to build a product with a very well-received interface. Tibbr has been
deployed in enterprises that were not originally Tibco customers and that its
social networking service has been integrated with non-Microsoft enterprise
software such as Oracle and SAP.
SocialCast
was started seven years ago, and one year ago it was acquired by VMware. As
such, it emphasizes integration with VMware virtualization software as well as
with the EMC product portfolio. EMC, a storage vendor, is a majority owner of
VMware.
