By Jim Lundy
Yammer concluded its world tour in San Francisco yesterday. There was a lot that went on at the event, particularly with all of the conversations and stories their customers were telling. This blog is about what we saw at the event and how things are changing for Yammer in the Social and workplace markets.
Yammer – Social
When we attended Yammer’s first event last fall, we talked about them being ready for the Enterprise (see First Cut). Yesterday, Yammer introduced a number of new capabilities that are part of its Spring Release. One of the most interesting is the play it is making to extend its platform via Desktop Sync and Content Collaboration that it is getting from its acquisition of OneDrum (see Aragon Research First Cut). The most significant new feature we saw was Universal Search, as well as the expanding set of integration options with Yammer.
Yammer takes on the Enterprise
What we saw yesterday was some significant shifts in the level of engagement by Yammer customers. These were mainstream enterprises who are using Yammer everyday. Executives from 7-Eleven, Deloitte, Supervalu, Westfield, and Verizon were all at the event. These were not run and gun testimonials. These customers talked with passion about how they use Yammer to accelerate their business and the engagement level of their people. Having been to recent events from Cisco, IBM, Oracle, Salesforce and Saba, the Yammer customer testimonials were of the same class and quality as the biggest vendors.
In particular, the video of the Supervalu CEO Craig Herkert struck me, as did the announcement that SuperValue is giving each of its 1500 Store Directors an iPad. If anything, this reinforces the Aragon Research position that the Tablet era is here.
http://youtu.be/3jFDK0EroR8
Yammer Partners out in Force
Yammer had a significant number of Partners demonstrating their integrations with Yammer at the event. Most of the executive staff from Spigit was there and they were showing off a new set of capabilities (more on that later). Social Talent provider UpMo was there as was Gamification vendor Badgeville. Yammer also announced an integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
Yammer is not the same firm it was six months ago. It has grown up and is now competing in the enterprise with all of the other ESN providers. We saw a startup called Jive go through this transformation in 2009. Unlike Jive, which replaced most of its Senior Management, it looks like David Sacks and the management team at Yammer are there to stay.