Microsoft Turns On Yammer For Office 365 Customers

Microsoft has signalled a major push for its social enterprise platform, with the announcement that it will activate Yammer for every eligible Office 365 customer.

The news comes as Redmond, under the direction of CEO Sadya Natella, continues to tightly integrate its different software platforms.

Social Enterprises

Microsoft made the announcement in a blog post by Kirk Koenigsbauer, corporate VP for the Office team.

He wrote that the move to bring Yammer fully into Office 365 by default follows the completion of a number of background tasks, including moving Yammer into Microsoft managed data centres and undertaking identity work with Azure Active Directory.

“Today, I’m excited to announce that we are activating Yammer for every eligible Office 365 tenant – new and existing – without requiring additional action on the part of admins,” Koenigsbauer wrote.

“Every Office 365 user with a Yammer license will be able to easily access Yammer from the Office 365 app launcher or start a Yammer conversation from SharePoint, Office 365 Video Portal and, coming soon, Delve and Skype Broadcast,” wrote Koenigsbauer. “This enables you and your coworkers to share ideas and work together in the open using Yammer’s flexible workspaces.”

The Yammer integration will roll out to all existing Office 365 tenants in three waves over the next few weeks.

The first wave takes place this week and includes Office 365 customers with a business subscription, who purchased fewer than 150 licenses that includes Yammer, and who have zero or one custom domains for Yammer.

The second wave begins on 1 March, and includes Office 365 customers with a business subscription who purchased fewer than 5,000 licenses that includes Yammer.

The third and final wave begins on 1 April, and includes all remaining customers with a business subscription and all customers with an education subscription.

Integration Drive

Microsoft purchased Yammer for $1.2bn (£825m) back in 2012, but the platform has remained in the background over the following years, as new competitors such as Facebook for Work and IBM Verse emerged.

That said, Microsoft has been building to this point for a while now, as it has been progressively tightening its integration with Microsoft’s product portfolio. In 2014 for example, it removed the need of logging into Yammer from Office 365.

Microsoft boss Natella has also been busy merging Microsoft’s differing software platforms into more integrated experiences for the customer.

A prime example is Windows 10 replacing Windows Phone on Redmond’s next generation mobile handsets, and making Skype the prime communication tool across Microsoft platforms.

What do you know about Windows 10? Try our quiz!