Microsoft to add Yammer Enterprise to Office 365 for Education plans

If you had any doubts that Microsoft's social-networking strategy revolves completely around Yammer, they should be put to rest this year.

"Go with Yammer" is becoming the rallying cry for Microsoft across more and more of its properties, including SharePoint, Office 365, Dynamics ERP and CRM and Skype, as a February 8 TechNet blog post made plain.

In that post, Micorsoft officials noted that as of April 1, 2014, Yammer Enterprise will ship with all Office 365 Education plans for no additional cost. Currently, education customers can use free Yammer Basic.

"Once Yammer Enterprise is available, tenant admins will receive an activation link in their Office 365 admin portal. Customers should visit the Office 365 Admin Portal to begin the self-guided provisioning process," according to the post.

Microsoft released a free Yammer app for SharePoint last summer that embedded Yammer feeds into SharePoint sites. Downloadable from the Office Store, the app works with SharePoint Online in Office 365 and SharePoint 2013 on-premises.

Microsoft is expected to share more Yammer roadmap specifics at its upcoming SharePoint Conference 2014 next month.

Microsoft bought enterprise social-networking vendor Yammer in June 2012 for $1.2 billion.

Update (February 12): Microsoft just made available an update to its Yammer app for SharePoint that adds more security functionality (around sign-in).