Microsoft Buys Social Network Yammer for $1.2 Billion

On Monday Microsoft finalized its acquisition of Yammer, one of the leading providers of social networking and real-time chat tools for enterprises. Yammer’s team will continue to report to its current CEO, David Sacks, under the umbrella of the Microsoft Office Division. The deal closed for $1.2 billion in cash.

Yammer currently has more than five million users and is deployed at 85% of Fortune 500 companies. It enables employees at a company to communicate in a manner more like Facebook than email, as well as collaborate on projects.

Microsoft plans to push adoption of Yammer alongside its cloud offerings in Office, such as SharePoint and Office 365, as well as Skype. Sacks maintains that Yammer will continue to develop as a standalone service, but that joining Microsoft will “give us access to the technologies, expertise and resources we’ll need to scale and innovate.”