Yammer: Held Back by Trust Issues?

When I saw the Yammer present (and subsequently win) at Techcrunch 50 earlier this month, I immediately signed up Managed Objects and sent out invites to the people I communicate with most, including the rest of our management team.

What’s a Yammer and why was I all over it? If you use Twitter or other microblogging services user, skip the rest of this paragraph – the short version is that it’s a communication platform that allows for the exchange of short messages between individuals as well as broadcasts. You can have threaded conversations as well as topic-focused ones using hashtags (e.g. #marketing, #myCMDB, or #competition). The idea is that instead of status meetings, or reading email threads, I can tap into a river of quick updates on various topics.

Everyone I invited recognized the inherent value of Yammer, largely because we have a few Twitter users in-house such as myself and Frank and we’ve talked it up. So why didn’t more people sign up and start using it right away? After stripping away the usual objections about another site to use, maintaining another social graph, luddite like fears of another Enterprise 2.0 fad and so on, the core issue turned out to be security, and more specifically trust in the cloud.

What it came down to was that everyone was concerned that we would adopt a communication system that although very valuable, resided outside of our firewall, in a service that was new, with no clear references to indicate that we could entrust our company’s confidential data. For the record, Managed Objects subscribes to a number of SaaS applications including Salesforce.com so we’re not averse to the model, we just need something to get over the Trust Hump (new term?).

Although it would be a great place for everyone to keep track of and discuss topics like our myCMDB product development activities, tips on handling specific competitors, partner/channel news, industry news, key sales activities and more, I don’t have a good answer on the Trust Hump. The testimonials on the Yammer website are great and reinforce the value side of the equation but don’t help with my issue.  The mashedlife approach to answering this question is a great start.

What's the solution? An inside-the-firewall Yammer solution would be great. Having it hosted in a trusted cloud (is there one that is recognized as such?). Or integrating it with a service that we already use. For example, a Salesforce.com + Yammer combo where account names are automatically used as hashtags? That would be awesome. If you have suggestions on handling the Trust Hump, alternate solutions, or ideas about other integrations, leave a comment.

- Abbas