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Microsoft completes Yammer deal: Open arms to the Office team

Microsoft and Yammer are together at last, in holy matrimony. The deal is closed and Yammer formally enters the Office division.
Written by Zack Whittaker, Contributor

Microsoft has completed the acquisition of Yammer, after it successfully met all the closing conditions.

The social enterprise social networking service is now part of the Microsoft Office division, though will also see integration in Microsoft Dynamics. The deal closes today following Microsoft's bid for the platform last month for $1.2 billion in cash.

"The deal is completed," said Jared Spataro, senior director of Microsoft's Office division. Good to know.

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But what's the deal: where is it going and how is it going to fit in to the vast array of Microsoft products beyond how it already does? It's clear at this point Microsoft is pitching Yammer as a standalone product for now, but will be nonetheless welcomed into the warm bosom of the Office family perhaps on a more deep, meaningful level.

More details are expected in the fall. Until then, Yammer's four-to-five million users can continue to use the service as though nothing's changed. 

The pumped-up Facebook clone will likely see tight integration with SharePoint, following the news that Yammer will be included with Office 2013 when it is released early next year. But details are still sketchy and we will find out more in fall.

"We look forward to accelerating the adoption of Yammer’s standalone service, and enhancing the social capabilities in Microsoft’s communication and collaboration offerings," Spataro said, in what may be the briefest statement given by the company in living memory, tweets notwithstanding.

A day before Microsoft announced it had finalised the Yammer acquisition, Sacks addressed the thousands of Microsoft employees attending this week's Microsoft MGX sales conference in Atlanta. Sacks tweeted about his address and included a picture of himself. (On the face of it, so what? But MGX is the "meeting of minds" that sends the sales people on their marching orders for the 2013 fiscal year.)

With that in mind, it shows Yammer is enough of a strategic element to Microsoft's enterprise armoury to push the product on its sales teams.

Image credit: Yammer.

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