And Microsoft definitely stands to benefit from helping Yammer build innovative applications on top of productivity software or products.
Microsoft has three product lines: personal computer (PC) operating systems - Windows, PC productivity software - Office (Word, Excel, Powerpoint...), and Server products (intended for businesses rather than individuals).
You can browse sites like Product Hunt and AppSumo to discover new productivity software.
On Thursday, Google, the Internet search giant, will unveil a package of communications and productivity software aimed at businesses, which overwhelmingly rely on Microsoft products for those functions.
At the time, the company was a struggling publisher of productivity software and PC games.
Its huge productivity software segment, led by Microsoft Office, grew 8percentto to $2.29 billion.
That will allow businesses to offload some of the cost of managing computers and productivity software.
If you want to use productivity software such as Microsoft, you can't.
This works well for normal office and productivity software, which uses 2D graphics.
The partnership plans to crowdsource the design of the new productivity software.
Most analysts say they think Microsoft will hold on to its near monopoly on productivity software.
