Microsoft Acquires Yammer For $1.2 Billion

Two weeks ago we reported that Microsoft was in talks to purchase social business platform Yammer and on Monday Microsoft made that rumor official. Yammer currently offers business social networking services to some of the countries largest business’ and the platform supports more than 5 million corporate users.

The acquisition is one of Microsoft’s largest to date behind only Visio, aQuantive, Navision, Fast Search & Transfer and Skype, the latter which Microsoft purchased in 2011 for $8.5 billion.

Since debuting four years ago Yammer had managed to raise $142 million from investors through several rounds of funding.

The move to further its stance online is important to Microsoft as more users begin to demand the use of more robust social-networking tools and internet services.

After the deal was announced Yammer CEO David Sacks said:

“When we started Yammer four years ago, we set out to do something big. We had a vision for how social networking could change the way we work. Joining Microsoft will accelerate that vision and give us access to the technologies, expertise and resources we’ll need to scale and innovate.”

Microsoft has not said how it will integrate Yammer into its own software, instead revealing that yammer will maintain “its commitment to simplicity, innovation and cross-platform experiences.”

It is likely that Microsoft will continue Yammer’s attempts to fully integrate the platform with Microsoft products including SharePoint, Office 365 and Lync. In 2011 Yammer integrated with SharePoint 2010 and then purchased software company oneDrum in an attempt to collaborate with Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

Following the acquisition Microsoft shares fell $1.01 to $29.69 at the end of trading.