Rich Wood

After my webinar on the topic went so well yesterday, I thought I’d distill the basics of Social (what, how, and why) in SharePoint 2013 into a few quick posts here at the blog.  Today’s inaugural topic represents the “what”— a quick look at the new social functionality in SharePoint 2013. Anyone who remembers the […]

I’m going to be presenting a webinar on “Understanding SharePoint 2013 and the Social Landscape” on September 19. Anyone who has been following this blog, or enterprise social computing in general, already knows that this space and the outlook for it has changed drastically in just the last twelve months.  We’ve seen Microsoft go from […]

As we all know, Microsoft’s “Wave 15” of Office products is now officially in public beta release.  While we’ve been paying a great deal of attention to SharePoint, my mind has lately been wandering back to a different side of this product family—Lync Server. We know that Lync 2013 is out there, and many of […]

SharePoint 2013 (or “Wave 15” as we unabashed Microsoft fanboys have been calling it) has been in public beta for a little over two weeks now, and we’re starting to see some more discussion of new features and functions around the web.  Our own Microsoft blog is no exception. A number of our customers have […]

That’s right folks, the next version of SharePoint has officially been revealed.  Here’s a few handy links for your reading pleasure in the next couple days: The Office 15 Preview Home is where you can learn about all the new Microsofty goodness from the top down. If you’re a techie, I’d suggest you try downloading […]

It’s official.  On his personal TechNet blog, Microsoft Office Division President Kurt Delbene has confirmed today that Microsoft is acquiring Yammer. We can gather a couple things from this.  One, the announcement comes from Mr. Delbene, so this is now an Office Division play beyond all doubt.  SharePoint and Office 365 are the primary landing […]

Microsoft made a big splash with the unveiling of their long-awaited Surface Tablet yesterday.  Never mind the interesting choice of branding (anyone familiar with the previous Microsoft Surface will be surprised they took the name from the world’s coolest cocktail table and applied it to a slate), the big question in our secret mountaintop command […]

We all have a great many questions about the roadmap impact of Microsoft’s much-discussed (and still, as of this writing, unofficial) acquisition of Yammer.  Serendipitously, TechCrunch has published an interview with departing Microsoft executive Nitin Bhatia, someone who might have better guesses than the rest of us.  In the interview, Mr. Bhatia– who is departing for […]

Wow.  And you thought we were done!  This afternoon, it feels like I’ve spent half the day keeping tabs on the conversation around Microsoft’s Yammer acquisition and its implications for enterprise social networking.  And for good reason– this is big news.  You can already find my own thoughts on the topic, both in terms of […]

So we’ve looked at Microsoft’s Yammer acquisition from a holistic, Microsoft-centric viewpoint.  One hot question that we haven’t yet covered is what this means to on-premise SharePoint customers who may already have their own social solutions installed and running. Here’s a quick take of the two key points from my own perspective: 1. To the Cloud. One […]

Maybe I’m amazed.  According to no less than the Wall Street Journal, Microsoft is in fact acquiring Yammer, Inc. This begs a few questions for which we’ll anxiously be awaiting answers, then: What, if any, aspects of Yammer’s current offering will be integrated into the next release of Microsoft’s productivity stack?  In other words, how will […]

By now you may have heard the rumor that Microsoft is looking to buy Yammer for a billion dollars. It’s a pretty shocking thought, but while anything can happen, I’m reserving my real shock until and unless something actually goes down.  Right now, this is just another rumor, nothing more, and a surprising one at […]