Yammer is introducing a suite of four application integration tools to make it easier for independent software vendors and corporate developers to link Yammer's enterprise social networking platform with line of business applications.
Eager to
win more converts to its enterprise social networking platform,
Yammer
is introducing a suite of products designed to make it easier for business
users to share information and take instant action on information generated
from line of business applications, including sales, finance and supply chain
systems.
Facing
intense competition in enterprises from Salesforce.com's Chatter
social collaboration platform, Yammer founder and CEO David Sacks said
enterprise social networking shouldn't revolve around a single business
application, such as CRM (customer relationship management), alluding to Salesforce.com,
which was founded with a focus on CRM, sales and marketing.
Nor
should enterprises be expected to implement a separate social network for the
employees working with specific line of business applications, whether it is
content management, human resources, finance or CRM, Sacks said.
Yammer
scored major success in its efforts to sign up major corporate customers when
NetSuite announced on May 10 that it will integrate the Yammer social
networking platform with its cloud suite of Enterprise Resource Planning,
Finance, Sales, eCommerce and Analytics applications.
In making
the announcement at its first annual user conference on May 10, Zach Nelson,
NetSuite president and CEO, said the company had concluded that it had to
provide a social networking platform for
NetSuite
by either building its own or partnering with an existing platform. NetSuite
decided to go with Yammer because it was already marketing an effective social
networking platform designed to integrate line of business applications.
The
products Yammer announced on May 17 include the Yammer Activity Stream, a new
tab on the Yammer Websites that aggregates what Yammer refers to as activity
"stories," which are essentially updates on the actions employees have
performed with various business applications. These stories are the same as the
personal updates that Facebook or Chatter users post about what is going on in
their lives or in their business activity.
Activity
Stream compiles these stories into a single feed that can be viewed by
everybody in a corporate workgroup, department or reporting chain. Sacks said
gaining access to these story feeds reduces the distracting "noise" of
unrelated reports or updates that workgroups have to deal with in trying to
manage business activities through email or with separate reporting streams
from multiple business applications.
The
company also announced a related product, the Yammer Stream API, which will
enable third-party developers to connect business applications to the Yammer
Activity Stream. NetSuite used this API to integrate information from the
NetSuite applications to the Yammer Activity Stream. A draft specification for
the Activity Stream API is available for comment on Yammer's developer site.
The
company expects to finalize the specification in June after reviewing the
comments. It will then publish the specification so it can be used by
third-party developers.
In
addition, Yammer announced extensions to the Open Graph Protocol originally
developed by Facebook, to allow enterprises to add extensions for
business-specific objects, such as employees, documents, offices and customers,
to the Yammer Social Graph. This enables Yammer to recognize the information
stream from any resource on the Internet, on company intranets or in enterprise
applications. Open Graph Protocol essentially simplifies the process of linking
to these resources.
The draft
specification for Yammer's Enterprise Extensions to the Open Graph Protocol is
available for comment on Yammer's developer Website. Yammer expects to complete
the review process and finalize the Enterprise Extensions in early June.
Finally,
the company announced Yammer Embed, which allows developers to embed Yammer
social networking fees inside any business application. This allows employees
to view and participate in Yammer discussions within their line of business
applications. Yammer Embed will be compatible with any HTML or JavaScript-based
business application that supports extensibility, and it will function
similarly to Yammer's current Microsoft SharePoint integration.
Sacks
said Yammer Embed will be available in the 2011 third quarter.
Yammer
claims that it has 2 million users working in enterprises around the world,
including in 83 percent of the Fortune 500.
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