When Socialtext announced last week that it was going to be offering customers a free Yammer migration service, my first reaction was: Why are they going after Yammer? Apparently Socialtext CEO Eugene Lee wanted to explain beyond the initial press release because he almost immediately took to his blog to provide more background on the move.

Lee insisted this was customer driven and not some sort of vendor jockeying or trying to lure Yammer customers (although that's more than likely part of it). It was more of an IT-driven story. As a free download, lots of employees are using Yammer outside of the purview of IT and Socialtext is making this about giving IT control--not a bad story on its face says Larry Hawes, principal at Dow Brook Advisory Services and until recently a Gilbane Group analyst.

"Socialtext is trying to win the hearts and minds of IT" Hawes said. "Think about it--most purchases of enterprise social software (ESS), especially SaaS offerings, have been made by business users and leaders, not by IT staff. That is especially true for pure-play ESS vendors (the platform vendors have a better-established toehold in the IT function at their customers). In short, Socialtext seems to be using Yammer as a strawman that they can pummel to make Signals (Socialtext's Enterprise 2.0 suite) look like a better alternative for IT buyers."

When asked to comment on the matter, Yammer CEO David Sacks wasn't going to bite on this one, but a Yammer spokesperson did say this: "This announcement reflects that our space is heating up and competitors are doing what they can to grab a piece of the pie from the market leader." I never saw Yammer as a market leader before this, per se, but in a sense, the Socialtext move did provide an opening for Yammer to react in this manner.

Analyst Dan Keldsen from Information Architected is surprised it took someone so long to take advantage of Yammer's open API in this fashion to provide a way to back out of it. That said, Keldsen is happy to see some competitive action in the staid Enterprise 2.0 space.

"I'm hoping this stirs up the competitive fires," Keldsen said, "because frankly, E2.0 (or whatever people want to call it today) seems to have stalled out in innovation and in adoption/use. Maybe we'll see a real focus on the application of these technologies to real business problems, rather than superficial features that are sometimes the exclusive focus of the 'social only' or technology zealots."

Whatever we see, this appears to be the first volley in a war for hearts and minds of corporate customers and where it stops, nobody knows. Could be a pivotal year for the Enterprise 2.0 market, though.

For more information:
- see the Socialtext press release

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