VENDORiQ: Yammering Away About Microsoft – Get Ready For More Change.

Why It’s Important

Contrary to early reports of a product phaseout, Microsoft clarified that Yammer will be integrated into Microsoft Viva Engage with very few changes. In a Microsoft post, the company announced that the same content can be accessed on Yammer web, desktop and mobile apps, and will appear on Viva Engage’s app in Teams. However, a few features will be discontinued, including:

• Live events and other videos hosted in Microsoft Stream (Classic) on iOS 
• Yammer settings such as managing delegate settings and setting skin tone
• Community file view stored in a SharePoint document library
• Full community information viewing and editing

IBRS interviewed a number of its clients to elicit their opinions on the integration and found out that most are confused with what’s happening. This reveals a few important implications for enterprise users.

Microsoft is known for offering free access to products with the option to switch to paid features. These include anti-malware (Security Essentials), admin health policy (Network Access Protection), server virtualisation (Hyper-V), and organisational networking (Yammer) tools. However, the company is now folding once free products into the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. The recent rebundling of information governance and data features into Purview, with its own licensing structure, is another example of this move to repacking services. 

Who’s Impacted

• Human resource management 
• Learning and development teams
• Digital workspaces and Microsoft 365 teams

What’s Next?

IBRS recommends that enterprises brace for further licensing changes in the coming two years, and potentially for price hikes (in no small part due to inflationary pressures). In fairness, IBRS also expect Microsoft to add a slew of new capabilities into the 365 ecosystem in the coming year, including features based on OpenAI’s capabilities.

Organisations also need to be constantly informed and trained on every change within the 365 ecosystem, since it can be difficult to reverse and address unexpected outcomes once changes are introduced and released to users. For example, the objectives and key results (OKR) service that Microsoft integrated into Viva in 2021 alarmed many employees on how their data will be collected and used.

• Assess vendors’ capabilities to provide transparent pricing structure, reliable enterprise support and engagement.
• Closely monitor Microsoft’s entire 365 ecosystem for changes, and the potential impact on both licensing costs and staff expectations.