Microsoft leads in enterprise collaboration, says Forrester

Audit and research consulting group, Forrester, reports that Microsoft leads the way in enterprise collaboration. According to the Forrester Wave: Enterprise Collaboration, Q4 2016 report, Microsoft beat out Salesforce, IBM, Jive, and others to take the top spot for enterprise collaboration.

The report cites Yammer, part of Office 365, as being the leading cause of Microsoft taking the top spot:

“Yammer is a core component of the Office 365 suite and the choice for connecting across organizations and for broad enterprise collaboration functions, but collaboration will increasingly take place in applications integrated with Office 365 Groups, with conversations, files, calendars, and notes as basic functions. Office 365 Groups sit at the center of Microsoft’s vision: Group members become objects in Azure Active Directory, where administration and connectors to other services are strongest.

Microsoft excelled across all the categories we evaluated except templates, communities, and application integration. Near-term investments will aid further integration with Office 365. Today, Yammer sends signals to Microsoft Graph and uses Graph to recommend groups and people to follow. Microsoft plans to add signals like conversations and files in the future. Delve incorporates links shared in Yammer for greater discovery across Office 365 and will soon enable inline conversations so that colleagues can share and discuss any content in Yammer directly from within the Delve experience.”

Overall, Forrester reviewed nine leading enterprise vendors of enterprise collaboration platforms. However, Microsoft was found to provide “better customer experiences, evolve toward broader communication needs, and integrate more tightly with other business applications,” than any other vendor.

Download the Forrester Wave: Enterprise Collaboration, Q4 2016 report.