Microsoft Brings Yammer To More Office 365 Plans For Free

Microsoft is bringing Yammer to more of its Office 365 SKUs, making the latter a more tempting offer. Educational and medium-business packages of Office 365 now come with Yammer. Microsoft added the social product to enterprise Office 365 SKUs late last year.

Office 365 is Microsoft’s answer to the modern software world. Office, long a massive and manageable cash cow, has to adapt or be sliced by a thousand cuts until more nimble, cloud-base offerings eat its market.

The company wants Office 365 to be a compelling offer, as there is normal human reticence to buying anything on endless subscription — you are willfully picking a negative cash-flow to your personal net worth, which isn’t too fun. But with all Office 365 SKUs now sporting a terabyte or more of cloud storage, and on the business end, Yammer for free, the value proposition is clearer.

An open question: How healthy is Yammer? When’s the last time Microsoft talked about Yammer by itself and not in the context of other products?

IMAGE BY FLICKR USER NICOLAS RAYMOND UNDER CC BY 2.0 LICENSE (IMAGE HAS BEEN CROPPED)