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 NextDocs– gives his thoughts on Yammer as it stands today, and how SharePoint and Yammer might complement one another in the future.
One theory this interview does not advance is the hot theory that Dynamics CRM and a SalesForce/Chatter compete motion are driving this move. Telling?
On Yammer:
“I used Yammer for a while to test it out and I thought it was fairly good but not quite where it needs to be.”
Sounds like a fairly lukewarm endorsement. But wait, there’s more.
“[Yammer] certainly does break periodically. We weren’t really aligned on Yammer when we were using it. There’s no doubt that scalability is still a concern.”
So what will Microsoft do to improve reliability? Read on.
On the acquisition’s future implications:
“My gut instinct is that Yammer will be left alone as a stand-alone product like Skype business. Then they will integrate Yammer with Sharepoint as part of the collaboration suite, and over time, it will become a big part of Sharepoint.”
One very interesting thought Mr. Bhatia brings forward is the possibility of Microsoft leveraging its Facebook investment and relationships to improve its solution for enterprise collaboration.
“I think what Microsoft is going to do is leverage its Facebook relationship to really develop and grow this product into a more scalable enterprise-ready software that they can build out. Microsoft will take the core of the product and start from there. They’ll have to make some sizable changes to it, but I think the Sharepoint engineering team can pull it off with the relationship Microsoft has with Facebook.”
He goes on to laud the Office division’s success in creating enterprise-ready software, which is valid praise. Microsoft may have its share of critics, but the ubiquity of Office and SharePoint make a pretty solid case for the value of their software. This is a company with a very solid track record and that’s a good sign for the enterprise regardless.
“They’ll review it and get it to the point where it is suitable for large companies. Sharepoint is used in projects that have over 300,000 people. Scalability is a big thing for Microsoft and it clearly has to be reviewed as the product evolves.”
For more, please read the original interview on TechCrunch’s own site.
