If you haven’t heard the news yet, Microsoft has officially announced that they acquired Yammer for 1.2 So if you’re Microsoft why would you spend 1.2 Out of all of the companies in the collaboration space I think it’s safe to say that Yammer is perhaps one of the most well known and dare I say “coolest”  Sharepoint on the other hand is well known yet has a bad reputation as being a non-usable and ineffective collaboration product yet it has an enormous paid user base. billion dollars. billion on Yammer? gives them a new business model.

Every Friday I’ll be reviewing a vendor in the emergent collaboration space and will provide an overview on that vendor which includes aspects from leadership and vision to technology and market focus. Newsgator believes that collaboration technologies and the changes in the ways that people work are changing very quickly. As of now though, Newsgator is still very focused on Sharepoint and the Microsoft platforms. Newsgator as of now appears to be the most integrated product into SharePoint and that also ties into the rest of the Microsoft stack such as Exchange and Lync.