Yammer social networking users may see Microsoft SharePoint integration as early as this summer, although Lync and Skype integration could still be a way off, V3 has learnt.
Such SharePoint integration is in addition to the Office and Yammer integration Microsoft has already said will be launched over the course of the next six months. Microsoft has promised to make SkyDrive Pro Yammer’s underlying storage platform in the same time period.
Last November at the Microsoft SharePoint conference, the firm discussed plans to allow SharePoint users to share their user identity with the Yammer social network, creating a single sign-on between the two social product.
No date for this integration was disclosed, but it now appears this will occur in the summer.
“The SharePoint team are talking about how to create a single sign-on between Microsoft and Sharepoint and this summer we will be clearer about authentication,” said Yammer chief technology officer and co-founder Adam Pisoni, speaking exclusively to V3.
“The integration between the two products will be incremental.”
Meanwhile, as Microsoft said last week, new Office integration will allow Yammer users to preview and edit files directly within their networking feeds using Web Apps.
“This is the first step as it will force us to work through shared authentication on a number of products,” said Pisoni.
Pisoni’s comments come as Microsoft today announced updates to Office 365, which include Yammer and SharePoint integration.
Pisoni said the whole Microsoft business is fully committed to speeding up innovation and integration across the software portfolio.
In the past six months, Microsoft Office staff have been committed to driving down development cycles. “Microsoft is moving aggressively to more modern development methods,” he added.
“This is such a huge shift for Microsoft, as they are so used to long periods of development where they have time to interact with analysts. It’s pretty exciting though.”
Microsoft has already made some headway in its integration of Yammer products with its own portfolio, previously releasing native integration between Yammer and Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
At some point in the futures Yammer users are likely to be able to expect both Skype and Lync integration. However, Pisoni said he was not in a position to comment on when Yammer users could expect such news.
“The reason why we haven’t talked about this [integration] is because Lync and Skype are currently working on how they come together. We are waiting for them to come back and then we will integrate,” said Pisoni.
Pisoni said a full Microsoft-Lync-Skype integration is more likely than a Yammer-Skype tie-up and a separate Yammer-Lync offering.
“Of course our preference would be fewer things. I’m sure [Microsoft] are moving in that direction. That’s what the customer wants after all.”
The news comes on the same day Microsoft unveiled its 365 suite of products in the cloud for business users.