What Does Microsoft Have Up Its Sleeve?

Six months ago, Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) shelled out over a billion dollars for Yammer, a corporate-driven social media company. Many scoffed, particularly at the price. In a world driven by Facebook (NASDAQ:FB), what would Microsoft be doing throwing big bucks at a social media engine?

Well, as it turns out, Microsoft had big plans for Yammer. The idea is to incorporate Microsoft’s Office Web Apps (Internet friendly versions of Excel, Word, Powerpoint, and so on) into Yammer’s business model, to streamline the office landscape and ease shared document-management capabilities and feed aggregation. It would also provide users with a single ID/sign on that would correspond with their Microsoft accounts.

Down the road, observers are speculating on email, instant message, and video chat integrations with Yammer. Also in the pipeline, following cues from Microsoft during the purchase of Yammer, would be integrations between Skype, Lync, Office, Office 365, and Dynamics. No word on when these integrations will be put in place, but according to cnet, we can likely expect to see the first of these changes sometime this summer.

This move is representative of a growing shift that companies are seeing, as they move more in favor to cloud-based solutions.

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