What's a Yammer?

Our company has tried dozens of approaches to real-time communication, file sharing, knowledge-base creation, in short, one-stop-shopping for team collaboration that must include clients, but on a limited scale.

Tall order.

It just may be that a new product called Yammer could be the best possibility to date.

What is Yammer? It's a blog; it's a file sharing platform; it's a private messaging tool (IM); it's an external network (for sharing with people not part of your corporate team); it's a knowledge base archive; it's way more than that and it's secure.

It's all hinged on your company's email address. Anyone with an active email address at your company is eligible to take part. And no, it's not free beyond a very basic plan. So if you and a very limited team wanted to test it out on a specific project, feel free.

If your company up to 100 users wants a more robust version, you pay $5 per month per user. For an enterprise version (fully loaded, and ready to integrate with third party apps like Salesforce.com), you call for a price. (Which option always scares me, but every organization has to decide if the features are worth the price.)

Inter-office, inter-team communications are always an issue. We all move at such a pace these days that it's difficult to make sure that everyone who needs to know, knows in a timely fashion; and that anyone and everyone who should get his/her hands on a file can - and that that file is the latest and greatest. Having a go-to application that will organize all that communication for you, and include your clients to the extent that they need to be included, is worth the investment, simply in missed communications and repetitive communications alone.

Yammer just might be the social platform of the future for your company. Check it out at www.yammer.com.

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