Yammer Inc. a business software company, agreed to be a property of Microsoft Corp. for a hefty price of $1.2 billion, according to a representative familiar with the business transaction.
It has not yet been detailed when the deal will be finalized and publically revealed. Also, Both Microsoft and Yammer have not yet openly confirmed the deal.
Yammer, similar to Facebook but more for a working environment, allows users to create social networks within companies. It provides file sharing and various other networking tools.
Initially launched in 2008, Yammer is just one workplace networking tool amongst many others. Some of the company's competitors include Box Inc., Dropbox Inc. and Jive Software.
Although not as heavily used as social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, investors have seen a rise in some of these newer companies' stocks.
Jive has seen an increase in its stock price by 50 percent, despite it still being a very young company, going public only six months ago. Dropbox has a private-market valuation of $4 billion.
"There is absolutely a next generation of enterprise technologies emerging, and it's going to be the foundation of how companies work five or ten years from now," said Aaron Levie, co-founder and chief executive of online file sharing start-upBox, to The Wall Street Journal.
Although these newer companies present competition to Microsoft, one of the original companies in creating work software, companies like Yammer tend to utilize Microsoft products. For example, Yammer can be can be connected with Microsoft software such as Outlook email.
Taking over Yammer will help expand and enhance the social features Microsoft Office currently has and can provide a new approach to the older company's work based software.
