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How does Yammer compare to SharePoint? Does it fit into an organization that is using SharePoint 2013?

Ben Skelton

SharePoint 2010’s social features were pretty rudimentary. Organizations that really embraced social had to turn to third-party vendors, such as NewsGator or Yammer. Although powerful, I always felt NewsGator was a little complicated and the user experience wasn’t ideal. SharePoint 2013’s social features are miles ahead of what was available in SharePoint 2010.

Personally, I don’t understand why an organization would adopt both SharePoint 2013 and Yammer. I would leverage the social tools within SharePoint 2013 as they are fully integrated within an organization’s employee portal. The mobile apps for SharePoint (both Windows Phone and iOS) will also help complete the social story. That said, if a client wanted to stay on SharePoint 2010, Yammer might be a good fit.

Chris Radcliffe

While Yammer and SharePoint 2013 share similar social capabilities (discussions, feeds, ratings, individual profiles, etc.), the difference is that Yammer’s social features have been utilized for years and the Yammer team appears to be evolving the social experience more rapidly than the SharePoint team. It is much easier to setup and use Yammer, so fostering collaboration can happen much more quickly. Yammer employees may also tell you that the service was built around people, whereas SharePoint was built around documents.

Yammer spoke about their intended SharePoint integration scenarios at the SharePoint Conference and highlighted concepts such as a Yammer Web Part, embeddable feeds, document and list integration, profile synchronization, and federated search. At this point, I’m only seeing talk about Yammer integrating with SharePoint Online, not the on-premise verion, but that could be coming. I could see organizations using both SharePoint and Yammer when the business case or appetite for social is not yet clear and there would be benefits in piloting Yammer. Agreed though, it would be weird to have a Yammer and SharePoint 2013 mixed social experience.

Ellisa Calder

I have to agree with Ben. SharePoint 2013 has expanded social features allowing you to create community sites, post micro-blogs, use hash tags, and mention colleagues and communities; but it’s still a light social feature set compared to Yammer, NewsGator, and a host of other social products on the market. SharePoint is still the extensible platform that is playing catch-up in the social computing space. That said, I think a lot of organizations will find SharePoint 2013’s out-of-the-box social features sufficient, at least as a first step into this space.

Yammer is completely about conversations in the open. It’s for sharing, collecting company knowledge (especially tacit knowledge), and creating opportunities for connections around work, interests or specializations. Yammer is a social web community experience. We heard over and over again, it exposes the opportunity for serendipitous discovery, and it does this a lot better than SharePoint 2013.

Right now, there isn’t a clear story about an integrated Yammer and SharePoint 2013 experience. For organizations just looking to dip their toes into social, SharePoint 2013 will probably suffice. For organizations looking for rich, social computing capabilities, they will need to look at other options. As for running Yammer and SharePoint 2013 simultaneously, it could be hairy to sync these two experiences for users. It will require a lot of work on the community/portal management side to do the manual integration that is required at this point. With the future of Yammer and SharePoint being so unclear at this point, I think it is going to make any decision regarding which social computing product to purchase very difficult.

Sarah Berg

I’m also having a hard time visualizing how organizations would utilize Yammer together with the social features of SharePoint 2013. I’m really impressed with the improvements Microsoft has made to the social story in SharePoint 2013, although as Ben mentioned, there was nowhere to go but up from SharePoint 2010. I would agree that Yammer has a more polished social experience, but SharePoint 2013 is definitely closing the gap.

One of the biggest things I was hoping to get out of the SharePoint Conference this year was a better understanding of how Microsoft plans to integrate Yammer into SharePoint and what that unification will actually look like for users, and I have to say I was pretty disappointed. It feels like a question that Microsoft doesn’t yet know the answer to, or they just aren’t ready to share it yet, but either way we’re left wondering. Until we have more clarity it will be hard develop an enterprise social strategy around these technologies, which is disappointing for organizations who have already invested in SharePoint and Yammer, or had been considering them for the future. In the meantime, I think the new social features in SharePoint 2013 are a great starting point for organizations that are looking to introduce social functionality into their portal environment.

Why do you think Microsoft bought Yammer?

William Hardy

In my opinion, Microsoft acquired Yammer for three main reasons:

1. 1. Leapfrog perceived social capabilities: Regardless of how good SharePoint 2013’s social capabilities are (and I think they are great), Microsoft would constantly be battling a perception of being one step behind in the enterprise social space (as they have been). Acquiring Yammer gives Microsoft the instant perception of being a serious contender in the enterprise social space and signifies to the market that they are willing to take bold steps to get there.
2. If you can’t beat them, buy them: By buying Yammer, Microsoft takes out a key competitor and arguably the most established brand in enterprise social. This turns them from a threat to strength.
3. Shake things up and accelerate innovation culture: It’s clearly not business as usual for the social team in Redmond. The acquisition of some relative rock stars in the enterprise social space means that the thought leadership and opinions for SharePoint social are now coming from entirely different directions. That includes a shift in focus to rapid innovation development cycles (90 days or less) and a Silicon Valley start-up culture.

Chris Radcliffe

I suspect Microsoft sees Yammer as a core pillar of their cloud strategy to help customers move to the cloud and break down barriers IT may present. The Free-mium model of Yammer reminds me of Windows SharePoint Service (WSS), where collaboration was given away for free in SharePoint, and as a result was lit up like crazy in North America. Based on the valuation, you have to imagine that a big part of Yammer’s value proposition was modeled around the future potential of cloud-based subscription revenue in the current Micorosft Enterprise Agreements.

Another way of looking at this question is, why did Yammer let themselves be bought by Microsoft? If you suspend belief that the massive valuation was the sole reason, the only other reasons I’ve heard that sound remotely possible are the fact that Microsoft’s partnership allows Yammer to more quickly accomplish their vision, and that Microsoft brings scale both technically and from a market share perspective.

Sarah Berg

Microsoft’s acquisition of Yammer was a smart move. Yammer has been adopted in many organizations and brings a wealth of experience around enterprise social. Social functionality was almost nonexistent in SharePoint 2010 and Microsoft bringing Yammer into the fold will boost their impact and presence in a space where they desperately needed to make big advances. With over five million corporate users, Yammer is an invaluable addition to Microsoft’s portfolio.

The benefits to Yammer were a little less obvious to me upon initial consideration, and I really like Chris’s idea of approaching this question from the other perspective. If I had been asked to pick two software companies with similar identities, cultures and values, I certainly wouldn’t have chosen Microsoft and Yammer. It seemed like a sell-out by Yammer, but the Yammer team seems genuinely excited about the change. Partnering with Microsoft will extend Yammer’s reach and will give them access to the resources needed to innovate on a much larger and more impactful scale.

Ben Skelton

I agree with everyone else, although I am not quite as enamored with Yammer as the rest of the group. I think the acquisition was similar to that of Skype. Microsoft saw a best-of-breed technology for an area that was strategically important (and they were under-performing in) and decided to acquire.

It’s interesting because both of these tools don’t look or feel Microsoft-y. I wonder if that will change over time or if they will keep their own identity. It will be an interesting time over the next few years for organizations that are standardized on the Microsoft stack as Microsoft determines how these social tools will all work together (or won’t).

What is the future of social with respect to SharePoint vs. Yammer?

Ellisa Calder

This is the million dollar question! Right now, I think it’s anyone’s guess. The Yammer group and the SharePoint team were adamant at the conference that Yammer will never be an on-premise solution; it will always exist in the cloud. Microsoft and SharePoint are pushing hard for the cloud, but there are many clients that will be on premise for the foreseeable future.

Given this reality, I can see Yammer, Office 365, and SharePoint Online integrating really well and becoming a dynamic collaborative, social online environment. For clients using on-premise installations of SharePoint, they will either end up with some half-baked Yammer integration paired with out-of-the-box (OOTB) SharePoint social features, or OOTB SharePoint social features on their own. For organizations that have yet to dip into any significant enterprise social technologies, SharePoint 2013 OOTB will likely be sufficient as they wade into the social enterprise space.

William Hardy

There’s no way Microsoft can continue to offer such vastly different and competing social directions going forward — they need to communicate a clear and cohesive integration story soon. Microsoft took a fair bit of criticism post conference for not presenting a well thought out vision of integration and left customers in a fairly awkward position when approaching enterprise social on the Microsoft platform. With no explicit integration road map, the vibe at the conference was one of a shift in direction to following Yammer’s new way of doing things. Therefore I would suspect future changes to SharePoint social will be heavily dominated by Yammer capabilities, with the bulk of the thought leadership and influence coming directly from that team.

` Sarah Berg

At the end of the day, I want to see a highly usable set of social features and capabilities that are tightly integrated into SharePoint. The big issues right now with SharePoint and Yammer are the confusion between where one ends and the other begins, and why an organization might use one over the other (or how they could use both). I’m not sure how this will play out for on-premise installations vs. organizations who are leveraging Microsoft’s cloud offerings, but my hope for the future is a seamless and exceptional social experience in SharePoint.

Where would Yammer be a good fit? Are there risks to be aware of or things to consider?

Chris Radcliffe

I think the answer is easy. If an organization has an older version of SharePoint (such as SharePoint 2007) or a similar legacy platform and is interested in exploring the benefits of social collaboration in a low-cost, efficient way I’d suggest Yammer! If the organization is on SharePoint 2010 and has already developed a very strong collaboration model or perhaps has had success with some of the social concepts, I’d recommend SharePoint and not complicate the user experience. Setting up an Office 365 trial would be the fastest and easiest way to test-drive the new social capabilities in SharePoint.

Biggest risk point to consider? If your current employee portal has a rich set of social capabilities, I would be careful extending an isolated Yammer solution. The risk is that employees could become confused about what the organizational standard is for managing information, collaborating, and communicating across teams. For years, organizations have tried to simplify the personal information management strategies that employees have to deal with, and adding Yammer without the right change management and communication could make matters worse!

Sarah Berg

I agree with Chris. I think if an organization is running an older version of SharePoint or is using a non-social portal platform, Yammer could be a good fit, especially as an introduction to the world of enterprise social. In this scenario it’s still important for the organization to provide clarity to employees around the use and benefits of Yammer, what is considered acceptable (and what is not), and how Yammer can be used to supplement the communication and collaboration that is already being delivered through the portal. Without change management and governance an organization is definitely at risk of confusing and alienating users, resulting in poor adoption and continued challenges down the road!

William Hardy

If an organization were likely to move to SharePoint 2013 in the near term, I would recommend adopting the native SharePoint social features, as they are excellent and likely capable enough for most organizations. SharePoint’s social capabilities have finally been extended beyond the My Site and have been blended throughout the platform in a fairly seamless fashion.

If clients were running SharePoint 2010 or a prior version with no immediate plans to upgrade and have a limited enterprise social footprint, then I would certainly take a good look at what Yammer has to offer. While the story has changed recently, earlier versions of SharePoint including 2010 can’t really claim to have competitive enterprise social features with Yammer. Yammer can also be deployed quickly and with relatively little effort.

Risks to consider? As mentioned by the others, introducing Yammer (in its current state of integration with SharePoint) could leave users with some confusion and detract from the use of your existing employee portal and collaboration platforms. Once you rollout a tool like Yammer, there’s no going back! Employees will become accustomed to the social capabilities and they will profoundly influence future directions/options. Even pilot rollouts of Yammer should be planned carefully for this reason.

https://www.habaneroconsulting.com/insights/SharePoint-Yammer

It’s rare to come across an organization (typically mid or enterprise size) that doesn’t have Sharepoint deployed. In fact out of all of the large organizations I have worked with or talked with I can’t think of a single one that doesn’t have an instance of Sharepoint deployed. Many collaboration vendors today all claim that they are being used by all the Fortune 100 (and they are), Yammer recently announced that they had over 800,000 paid users. Compare this to Sharepoint which over the past 5-6 years has sold over 36 million user licenses!

So it appears that Sharepoint is widely popular among many companies yet when I talk to employees at these companies it’s rare for me to hear anything positive said about the platform. It’s a bit of a conundrum, Sharepoint is everywhere yet it appears that many people hate it, well, if they hate it then why are companies deploying it?

There are a few major reasons for why companies end up going with Sharepoint:

• they get it a very low cost (oftentimes free) because they are Microsoft partners
• they are already so dependent on Microsoft products that Sharepoint seems to be the logical choice
• a proper vendor evaluation never takes place and instead the company goes with the apparently easiest and lowest cost alternative
• enterprise security from a reliable vendor
• companies know that Microsoft isn’t going anywhere whereas some of the other collaboration vendors in the space might not be around the long
• it was one of the earlier collaboration platforms available (initial release was actually in 2001)
• they focus on what Microsoft says it can do and is good vs what it can really do and is good at (marketing vs reality)

I’m not going to go into detail about the platform itself and why so many people are upset with it. You can do a simple Google search for “I hate Sharepoint” or “Sharepoint sucks” to find more than your fare share of articles, blog posts, and videos about why people are unhappy with the product.

Companies that deploy Sharepoint (or any other collaboration platform) and then realize it’s not the right fit end up in a bit of a pickle. It’s very tedious and expensive to switch collaboration vendors especially if you’re a large company. Some companies such as TELUS use certain features of Sharepoint integrated into a broader collaboration platform toolset but many other companies out there simply feel stuck and lost.

The reality is that Sharepoint is getting such a bad rap because many of the companies using the platform shouldn’t be using it, Sharepoint is not the right fit for many companies that continue to deploy it. This is why companies such as Newsgator were created, to help improve the usability and functionality of Sharepoint. This is also why so many vendors out there continue to integrate their solutions with Sharepoint. Some vendors try to replace Sharepoint but many acknowledge that it’s not going anywhere since it is so deeply rooted within many companies.

It’s unfair to criticize Sharepoint by saying “it sucks” because it certainly has its uses within organizations but that doesn’t mean it should be used in EVERY organization. Sharepoint 2010 has definitely seen some improvements and I believe that Microsoft will continue to make enhancements to the platform (or they will buy Newsgator). Honestly companies that deploy Sharepoint only to see negative feedback about the platform really don’t have anyone to blame but themselves, harsh but true.

Moral of the story is that organizations need to do more when it comes to making sure that they are deploying the right tool for their employees. Sharepoint isn’t necessarily a bad platform but it is certainly not THE collaboration solution. Make sure to do your homework before deploying tools.

A caveat before we start: This post is referring to the current release of SharePoint – SharePoint 2013. If you are using SharePoint 2010 or older versions and want to introduce enterprise social networking (ESN) tools, your decision is more straightforward. Use Yammer or an equivalent product such as Jive or Newsgator, or do without until you upgrade.

Here’s the summary:

For organisations already using SharePoint 2013 for content management who want to leverage social networking features…

Read on for the long version:

Do we have to use Yammer now instead of SharePoint for social activities and news feeds?

It’s a question I have been asked by many clients and event attendees who have invested in using SharePoint 2013 and/or Office 365 since the beginning of the year. The confusion has been caused by Microsoft seeming to be more in love with Yammer than SharePoint of late:

“In my customer meetings over the last few months, people have often asked, “What should I use for social? Yammer or the SharePoint newsfeed?” My answer has been clear: Go Yammer!”
- Jared Spataro, Director, Microsoft SharePoint Product Group¹

“OneNote, Yammer, SkyDrive are growth drivers for Office”
- Kurt Delbene, President, Microsoft Office Division²

So the advice from Microsoft is pretty clear. If at all possible, choose Yammer.

There is also a specific reason for choosing Yammer over SharePoint:

• You want to invite people into the network who are not licensed SharePoint/Office 365 users.

i.e. you want your social network to spread beyond the organisation. You can invite external users to participate in content within SharePoint, but they don’t get a profile or any level of personalisation features. They just get access to the content. Yammer gives every participant a profile and personalisation such as an activity stream of who and what you are following.

But there are reasons to not use Yammer, at least for now if you are using Office 365:

• Do not want the overhead of maintaining an additional set of users accounts
• Want enterprise search and Office integration
• Regulatory issues with using the service

Whilst Yammer is included for free within an Office 365 Enterprise plan subscription, it still has its own separate user identities. There is integration thanks to federated sign-on: logging in to one will also log you in to the other. But it’s still two separate identities to maintain which adds to IT overheads. This is due to be resolved in the Autumn.

The social features within SharePoint are fully integrated with search and Office. This means you can view people and conversations in search results, and can co-author documents direct within the browser using Office Web Apps. None of this is currently possible with content stored within Yammer. Office integration is slated for Spring 2014.

The final key blocker for now is regulatory issues. Office 365 has higher security credentials than Yammer. It goes beyond the basic EU Safe Harbor Agreement to also support EU model clauses which covers additional EU member state data protection legislation. In the UK, that means IL2 accreditation for UK government bodies. At the time of writing, there’s still no comment as to if or when Yammer will be IL2 accredited.

There’s a reason to not use Yammer specifically for on-premise deployments of SharePoint 2013, and that’s simply that Yammer is cloud only, it’s an online service. If you want social networking content restricted to on-premise services, then stick with SharePoint 2013 or use an alternative on-premise enterprise social networking tool.

And finally, there’s another reason to not use Yammer for now. And that’s the ‘keep it simple’ principle. If the preference is to keep the choice of technologies as simple and consistent as possible for users, and you are already using SharePoint sites for content management, then stick with SharePoint unless you have a compelling reason to use Yammer that SharePoint cannot satisfy. Running two solutions that look similar, with some overlapping features but also some fundamental differences, can be confusing and may increase training/support overheads.

Is Yammer the future? Microsoft seems to think so and given they spent quite a lot of money to buy it, you have to assume they are serious. Integration with the other Office 365 services – Exchange, Lync and SkyDrive – is on the cards, along with integration with the Dynamics range including CRM. But enterprise social networking tools are still immature and who knows what the future may hold. I’m surprised the likes of LinkedIn haven’t started to encroach on this space. For now, use the tool that offers the most value for your organisation today. Vendors will say what’s in their interests. That’s not always as in alignment with what organisations need.

References

¹ Yammer and SharePoint: Enterprise Social Roadmap Update – Microsoft, March 2013

² OneNote, Yammer and SkyDrive are the growth drivers for Office – Microsoft, February 2013

³ A short guide to business impact levels – HMGovernment G-Cloud