Forrester Research last week published a report on SharePoint, Yammer, and Microsoft’s direction for the two. I’ve always found the analysis put about by the likes of Forrester and Gartner to be far more important than the common buzz that gets tweeted and blogged around the internet because, bottom line, their material targets CIOs outright. And guess what? CIOs read it, so as much as these firms are analysts, they’re also influencers.
In this case, Forrester’s top voice on Microsoft, Rob Koplowitz, returned to a subject on which he joined me for a webinar earlier this year: The Microsoft offering for enterprise social. The crux of Mr. Koplowitz’ analysis hinges on a single pro/con:
“Microsoft’s $1.2 billion acquisition of Yammer in 2012 appears to be the perfect solution to address SharePoint’s main challenges — but only for those users who can move critical workloads, at least in part, to the cloud.”
It really is that easy—and therefore that complex. Yammer is the big deal, it is the platform play, it does transform everything we’ve assumed to be true about SharePoint—but we still don’t have a path to parity for on-premise SharePoint customers. Microsoft’s answer to those customers is to sign up for Yammer and download the Yammer web parts to sync up on-premise collaboration with Yammer’s cloud-based social feed, but that feels like a band aid. This is the space in which the likes of NewsGator and Beezy can still play with confidence while they pivot to go beyond simple social.
For more detail and insights from Forrester and Mr. Koplowitz, read the report. For more from us, stay tuned….
