In July, Microsoft completed its acquisition of the Yammer business oriented social networking service for $1.2 billion. Today, as part of its SharePoint conference in Las Vegas, the company outlined its plans for Yammer, including some changes in pricing for current customers.
In a post on Microsoft"s official blog, Jared Spataro, the senior director for Microsoft"s Office Division, stated that the company will reduce the number of stand alone Yammer options from four to just two. One of them will be a free version called Yammer Basic. The other remaining stand alone option will be Yammer Enterprise. Spartaro stated, "As a part of these changes, we reduced the price of Yammer Enterprise from $15 per user per month to $3 per user per month."
Microsoft will also be offering Yammer Enterprise for customers who purchase SharePoint Online at no extra cost. Finally, Microsoft will offer Yammer Enterprise for free for all users of Office 365 Enterprise. Spataro said, "By simplifying Yammer standalone and shipping Yammer Enterprise with SharePoint Online and Office 365, we"re making it easier than ever before to get started with enterprise social networking." ZDNet.com reports that the new prices will go into effect on March 1st.
The blog post also hints at plans that will integrate Yammer completely into Microsoft SharePoint but doesn"t offer concrete details on when that might happen. ZDNet.com speculates that might not happen until the next version of Office is launched in a few years.
Source: Official Microsoft blog | Image via Microsoft