Microsoft ditches Yammer model and goes all-in on Viva Have interaction • TechCrunch

Microsoft has confirmed that it’s lastly killing off Yammer, the enterprise social community it procured more than a decade ago for $1.2 billion.

Yammer was initially created out of San Francisco again in 2008, with co-founder David Sacks formally launching the startup at a TechCrunch startup event. The corporate went on to raise north of $140 million in funding earlier than Microsoft swooped in with its billion-dollar bid 4 years after its launch.

In some ways, it’s shocking that the Yammer model has lasted this lengthy. Regardless of Microsoft’s finest efforts to bring Yammer to the masses by integrating it into its core Workplace suite of merchandise, Microsoft has set about growing tangential communication instruments such as Microsoft Teams, which the corporate integrated with Yammer in 2019. After which two years in the past, Microsoft launched Viva, pitched as an “worker expertise platform” that was one thing akin to the company intranet of yore. Within the intervening months, Microsoft has been turbo-charging Viva, and final yr it launched Viva Engage, which it stated on the time was an “evolution of the Yammer Communities app.”

Complicated

It was turning into more and more clear that there was little area or want for Yammer in Microsoft’s array of merchandise, and having two comparable manufacturers that did a lot the identical factor was complicated. And so it’s now phasing out the model utterly and going all-in on Viva Have interaction as an alternative.

“Over the past a number of months we’ve heard your suggestions that having two apps surfacing comparable experiences and the identical companies and content material has launched confusion and made it difficult to drive adoption and create readability for finish customers,” famous Viva and Yammer chief vice chairman Murali Sitaram in a blog post.

Lengthy story quick, Yammer might be swallowed completely by Viva Have interaction, with the branding altering incrementally throughout the merchandise all through 2023. It will embody altering the present Yammer cell apps to Viva Have interaction from March, which might be adopted by a transition for the Yammer net app beginning this summer season.