EXCERPT
IGN Entertainment Yammers for Collaboration
Erin Traudt
Global Headquarters: 5 Speen Street Framingham, MA 01701 USA
P.508.872.8200
F.508.935.4015
www.idc.com
IN THIS EXCERPT
The content for this excerpt was taken directly from IDC Buyer Case Study, "IGN
Entertainment Yammers for Collaboration" by Erin Traudt (Doc # 230895). All or
parts of the following sections are included in this excerpt: IDC Opinion, In This Study,
Situation Overview, and Essential Guidance. Also included are Tables 1 and 2.
IDC OPINION
There are three major trends shaping the IT industry today that are receiving an
enormous amount of buzz ² mobility, cloud computing, and social software. Social
software, in particular, is the more recent phenomenon to take the software
landscape by storm, thus garnering increased attention over recent years. However,
the question of how businesses are approaching organizational requirements,
vendor/product/delivery model selection, and solution rollout to achieve successful
usage levels has been a top question among IDC clients. Yammer is one company in
an increasingly crowded marketplace that leveraged the cloud computing model to
deliver its Twitter-like microblogging service in 2008 and has since grown into a more
robust enterprise social software solution. This Buyer Case Study features IGN
Entertainment, a Yammer customer since January 2011, and provides insight into
how the company uses Yammer as an internal collaboration and information sharing
vehicle. IGN Entertainment selected Yammer to be part of its social software strategy
for the following reasons:
` Yammer passed the 15-minute rule litmus test. The 15-minute litmus test from
IGN Entertainment's engineering department requires that if someone cannot get
a SaaS application up and running in 15 minutes then that solution is no longer
considered. Yammer met the criteria.
` Yammer delivers its enterprise social software via the software-as-aservice (SaaS) model. Believing that as many business functions should be
pushed to the cloud as possible, IGN Entertainment is a strong advocate for the
SaaS delivery model because of its flexible upgrade path and lack of additional
hardware to procure.
Filing Information: November 2011, IDC #230895e
: Excerpt
IN THIS BUYER CASE S TUDY
This IDC Buyer Case Study is designed to capture the business situation and drivers,
decision-making process, vendor selection, implementation approach, benefits and
challenges, and lessons learned for other buyers considering a social software and/or
cloud computing investment. Social software has received increased attention over
recent years, but the question of how end users are approaching business
requirements, vendor/product/delivery model selection, and solution rollout to achieve
successful usage levels has been a top question among IDC clients.
To help other buyers evaluating social software delivered via the cloud computing
model and vendors developing, marketing, and selling these solutions, IDC is
conducting a series of buyer case studies to highlight end-user organizational
challenges, the evaluation process, solution attributes, the implementation procedure,
and benefits and results achieved from select products. In this Buyer Case Study,
IDC features IGN Entertainment, a leading online media and services company
focused on the video gaming and entertainment industry. In July 2011, IDC
interviewed David Ting, general manager of eSports and vice president of Research
and Development as well as Jennie Fissel, talent wrangler at IGN Entertainment
about the company's experience with Yammer.
SITUATION OVERVIEW
Dissatisfied with a recent Microsoft SharePoint implementation and out of budget to
purchase a new solution in December 2010, the engineering department within IGN
Entertainment wanted a solution that could provide the collaboration and informationsharing capabilities that IGN Entertainment needed. A member of the engineering
team discovered Yammer and signed up for a free account, essentially starting a
trend in the department. From there, Yammer grew virally throughout the
organization, leading to an enterprise license purchase by IGN Entertainment in
January 2011, thereby giving Yammer access to 400±500 employees and guests
worldwide.
O r g a n i z a t i o n O v e r v i e w IGN Entertainment, a division of News Corp., is a leading online media and services
company focused on the video gaming and entertainment industry. The company
offers gaming and entertainment content, digital distribution services, and game
technology primarily targeted at men between the ages 18 and 35. IGN Entertainment
employs 400 people worldwide, but the company does not publicly report fiscal year
revenue. Table 1 provides a summary of IGN Entertainment and Yammer
implementation.
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TABLE 1
B u y e r C a s e S t u d y I n f o r m a t i o n Category
Details
Company
IGN Entertainment
FY10 worldwide revenue
NA
Number of employees worldwide
400
Description
Real-time social collaboration
Implementation type
SaaS
Implementation time
Limited implementation required; grassroots acceptance by employees
over three months (from departmental trial to signed enterprise
contract)
Primary benefit
Knowledge sharing
Primary vendors used
Yammer
Number of users
400±500 total employees and guests
Business process enhancement
Increased efficiency and collaboration
Industry
Entertainment
Source: IDC, 2011
C h a l l e n g e s a n d S o l u t i o n Business Challenges The business challenge IGN Entertainment faced was the need to share technical
information quickly throughout the organization. For example, if there was a special
HTML5 technique discovered or a security hole in Apple iOS, the engineering team
wanted a way to share that knowledge or help solve development issues. In the past,
this information was typically shared via email, but the company also tried
SharePoint. However, IGN Entertainment realized that neither application was a
viable solution for these types of communications.
The engineering team began using Yammer's free service to share information in a
similar way that Twitter is used to send Tweets and follow friends. According to Ting,
"We found it's almost like an internal Twitter, but that it was also more effective to
leverage an internal corporate tool by sharing it with anybody that wants to subscribe
to that information." Widely sharing such information eliminated duplication and
redundancy whereby one developer could benefit from another's discovery. IGN
Entertainment not only found that Yammer helped increase efficiency, but it also
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facilitated a knowledge-sharing culture. According to the company, employees were
able to reach a larger audience with Yammer and communicate things they might not
have otherwise shared companywide. Fissel elaborated, "When employees have a
platform to basically share their thoughts, it actually allowed a lot of people to open up
more."
"Yammer is important to us," said Ting. "We are so heavy on email that things tend to
get lost or, if you just have something interesting to share like an article, Yammer is a
better place to do that than email. One, you can share it with a boarder audience, and
two, it's not lost in the constant stream of email."
Selection Process and Business Requirements IGN Entertainment evaluated a couple of enterprise social software solutions besides
Yammer, but Yammer passed the company's 15-minute rule litmus test. The 15minute litmus test from the engineering department requires that if someone cannot
get a SaaS application up and running in 15 minutes then that solution is no longer
considered. According to Ting, "Yammer was so easy to use that it actually passed
that rule very easily." Additionally, the company prefers the cloud model versus
implementing on-premise software. Ting reasoned, "When you host your own
solution, there is a false sense of security associated with it. When you work with a
SaaS provider, a lot of the headache can be removed."
In December 2010, the use of Yammer's free product began to reach critical mass,
and the decision was made to purchase an enterprisewide Yammer license. Although
budget was not previously allocated toward buying another collaboration tool, Ting
believed that this was important enough for IGN Entertainment that funding was
pulled from another project to support Yammer. An enterprise license was signed in
January 2011 for 400 seats and the number of users spiked in February 2011 at 200
users. IGN Entertainment purchased an additional 50 seats shortly afterward for
contractors and guests. The enterprise license provides IGN Entertainment with
additional security and features such as Windows authentication so if an employee
leaves, Yammer can no longer be accessed by that individual.
IGN Entertainment did not have any special requirements built into the service-level
agreement (SLA) with Yammer since it's a corporate solution and not one of IGN
Entertainment's consumer-facing SaaS products, which needs to go through more
rigid SLA definition. However, there were concerns about privacy and user data on
behalf of the legal department at IGN Entertainment when selecting an enterprise
social software solution such as Yammer. Once the legal department used Yammer
and understood the nature of the messages being sent were not confidential, the
contract with Yammer went through without issue.
Implementation and Rollout It took approximately three months from the time the engineering department
discovered and joined the free Yammer service to negotiating the enterprisewide
license. Almost instantly IGN had 200 users on Yammer and using it on a regular
basis. According to Ting, "The real test is actually the adoption within the
organization. When we hit a critical mass of people, it basically was a snowball effect.
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We didn't force anyone to go on it. This is what an IT tool purchase should be." Table
2 provides a brief overview of the Yammer product.
TABLE 2
B u y e r C a s e S t u d y P r o d u c t I n f o r m a t i o n Category
Details
Vendor and product name
Yammer Inc. and Yammer
Type of cloud solution (SaaS, IaaS, PaaS)
SaaS
Private or public cloud
Public
Primary cloud provider
Yammer
Other technology providers
None
Source: IDC, 2011
The implementation and rollout was relatively uncomplicated from IGN
Entertainment's perspective; employees were simply given access to Yammer and
then encouraged to share, collaborate, and post messages accordingly. For Fissel,
inviting people to Yammer was straightforward, "It's easy for me to send Yammer a
file in the very beginning with all our employee information. Yammer does one upload,
everyone receives an invite, and they can immediately log in. They can then select if
they want to access Yammer through their mobile device, desktop client, and/or Web
interface."
Also fueling the engagement and activity on Yammer is the noticeable executive-level
support for the solution. IGN Entertainment's president, Roy Bahat, was an early
Yammer adopter and frequent contributor. The company did not conduct any formal
Yammer training sessions for employees but sent an email notification about
subscribing along with posting information to its intranet site. IGN Entertainment also
made establishing a Yammer account part of new hire orientation.
R e s u l t s Benefits From starting out as a specific tool used by the R&D team, Yammer has become a
companywide mechanism for distributing information, encouraging innovation, and
fostering the dynamic exchange of ideas and opinions. This has resulted in several
benefits to the organization, not the least of which is creating the type of open
environment that IGN Entertainment's management team wants to promote. Yammer
has enabled, in some specific cases, faster decision-making capabilities. For
example, Ting had developed four promotional reels for a tournament eSports
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running online and couldn't decide which one to use. So Ting polled his colleagues on
Yammer to help him make a selection.
Additional benefits recognized from using Yammer is the fresh content and new
information being shared. Employees are more knowledgeable overall and
connected. According to Fissel, "It gives me a connection to people that I might not
work with closely everyday because they are located in another office. I can even
know more about the people that I have not ever met in person by what they post on
Yammer. I can interact with them more than I would through my regular job or by
email or phone calls."
Lessons Learned From a cloud computing perspective, IGN Entertainment is a firm believer that this is
the way of the future. Ting observed, "A lot of times there is a false sense of security
where if you run it yourself you will do better. If the SaaS provider is good, it will do a
better job than you in running your own proprietary software that you would run in
your datacenter."
IGN Entertainment by and large is very satisfied with its Yammer implementation and
rollout; IGN Entertainment believes that the early adoption levels recognized was
because of its organic approach versus mandating employees to use the solution.
Fissel commented, "I think if you try to push rules on it and if you come at it from an
HR department that's watching people slip up then I think employees are not going to
use it. Part of it is that we don't sensor things, so people can feel very comfortable
posting and being themselves."
IGN Entertainment is still using email and SharePoint, although the use of these
systems has become more targeted. Broadcast messages are being sent through
Yammer versus email, which is helping to reduce email clutter and the volume of
messages potentially being undiscovered due to the number of emails being received
on a daily basis by employees. Furthermore, SharePoint is primarily being used as a
document repository resource versus real-time social collaboration tool. The company
recently migrated from SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint 2010 and currently has no
plans to integrate with Yammer. IGN Entertainment would, however, like to have
more integration with Active Directory to manage profiles and access to Yammer in
the future.
ESSENTIAL GUIDANCE
In a similar vein to the way Yammer and enterprise social software can help bring
efficiency into the collaboration practices of an organization, SaaS has altered the
way companies purchase and implement functionality that can bolster standard
business operations. IGN Entertainment recognized the benefits of the cloud
computing model such as the unnecessary need to purchase hardware and dedicate
valuable IT resources to implement, manage, and maintain Yammer. Ultimately,
businesses that deploy the combination of an enterprise social software solution
delivered via the SaaS model are helping enable employees and IT departments to
be more innovative while increasing organizational productivity and satisfaction.
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For IGN Entertainment, adopting an enterprise social software solution such as
Yammer has fostered a dynamic and open environment, which encourages the
exchange of ideas and opinions. Yammer fits well into the corporate culture, and it
opened the door to innovation and collaboration by employees who originally shared
very little. IGN Entertainment allows its Yammer users to be self-policing about the
ideas and content shared while encouraging succinctness and brevity in
communications. The company wanted to stay true to its corporate culture while
stimulating more collaboration.
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