Jive SBS Syndication Feed

Planting Bigger Roots in the Bay Area and Looking for a Few Good Jivers

matt@jivesoftware.com — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 23:37:02 GMT

I’ve never been so happy to unpack boxes. That’s just one of the memorable scenes happening at Jive’s brand new Bay Area home at 735 Emerson in downtown Palo Alto. We moved into this great space (which formerly housed Ning) after outgrowing our first Palo Alto space in only five months. Those of us in that first “Jive South” office quickly learned how to optimize space on a weekly basis as more and more employees joined. But now we feel like we have a great home that gives us plenty of room to grow as we expand our Silicon Valley team.

The other scene unfolding are the final touches for tonight’s Open House event to celebrate our new digs. If you are in the area, come join us tonight (November 19) from 4-7pm for some food and drinks. A good number of the Jive engineering team will be joining me to honor their efforts in launching Jive SBS 4.0 last month – the biggest bundle of innovation in our company’s history. Please RSVP to events@jivesoftware.com so we get you on the list.

Another major reason for the Open House -- Jive is aggressively hiring product management and engineering positions to help with our expansion efforts. It’s no secret that the Bay Area is a cradle of incredible tech talent, and we’d like to meet more of you and share the excitement of what it’s like to lead the Social Business Software revolution. The Open House is a great place to get familiar with the team and hear about what we’ve done and where we’re going.

JiveWorld09 Videos are Live - Over 20 Hours of Social Business Wisdom

communities@jivesoftware.com — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 21:56:44 GMT

We're excited to announce that we've packaged up all the videos from the conference, and loaded them into the JiveWorld event site for viewing. In parallel, you've probably noticed that we added all the slides here into the JiveWorld09 Group to facilitate followup discussions around each session. We'll also be sending out emails with more info, and provided some commentary over on the Jive Talks blog:

Thanks to nearly 30 customers and partners and Jive's own product experts and strategic consultants, there is a ton of free, valuable content that is now available to you on the JiveWorld event site.

This includes real-world case studies with lessons you can apply immediately at work. Thought-provoking questions and key takeaways for maximizing results with Social Business Software. And impressive metrics and outcomes that exceeded the expectations of the customers sharing them. (Please note -- a few clients requested their content not be published online. So if you detect an omission of content, that's why.)

If you attended, we know you've eagerly awaited this content and we thank you for your patience. Now you can make up the sessions you missed, or get a refresher on what you heard.

If you couldn't get to JiveWorld09, this is goldmine. The most current thinking, strategies and practical applications of Social Business Software in global enterprises is now at your fingertips.

We can't thank our partners and customers enough for making this such a successful inaugural event, and are already looking forward to next year's even bigger and better JiveWorld!

JiveWorld09 Videos and Presentations Now Available Online

communities@jivesoftware.com — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 21:27:56 GMT

It's hard to believe that JiveWorld09 concluded just a few short weeks ago. It was clearly one of the biggest and most powerful gathering of enterprise social business leaders.

While the success of our inaugural community conference outpaced our own expectations, I've been just as excited about the post-event feedback, discussions and customer requests. What I'm hearing both validates our strategic vision and provides valuable insights to help deepen and broaden our value to the enterprise.

The team here has been busy formatting and organizing conference content to ensure your ease of access. Thanks to nearly 30 customers and partners and Jive's own product experts and strategic consultants, there is a ton of free, valuable content that is now available to you on the JiveWorld event site.

This includes real-world case studies with lessons you can apply immediately at work. Thought-provoking questions and key takeaways for maximizing results with Social Business Software. And impressive metrics and outcomes that exceeded the expectations of the customers sharing them. (Please note -- a few clients requested their content not be published online. So if you detect an omission of content, that's why.)

If you attended, we know you've eagerly awaited this content and we thank you for your patience. Now you can make up the sessions you missed, or get a refresher on what you heard.

If you couldn't get to JiveWorld09, this is goldmine. The most current thinking, strategies and practical applications of Social Business Software in global enterprises is now at your fingertips.

As always, we'd love your feedback and questions in the JiveWorld Community. Together, we'll keep the conversation going until next year -- when the conference will be even bigger and better.

Cisco Helps Jive Spread the Social Religion

matt@jivesoftware.com — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:06:44 GMT

I've seen quite a bit of buzz about Cisco's social software announcement yesterday. Honestly, Jive is excited to see Cisco entering the social software market. For years, Cisco has used Jive Social Business Software (SBS) for its customer and partner facing communities. In fact, the yesterday's launch of the Enterprise Collaboration Platform was managed via a community built on Jive SBS.

Jive shares Cisco's vision of unified communication and collaboration eventually merging, and we both believe social software will be central to this shift. The difference is the approach, as Tony Bates, SVP of Cisco, said in yesterday's Wall Street Journal. Cisco will continue to be the leader in communications plumbing, using social software to integrate its set of communications tools including WebEx, Jabber, and Telephony. Meanwhile, Jive will continue to focus on engaging employees, partners, customers, and prospects where and how they work, with Jive's SBS platform co-existing with collaboration and content systems from Cisco, Microsoft, and others.

We will be watching Cisco's developments closely as they start rolling out products mid-next year. And just as Google Wave is helping to push the envelope, Jive welcomes the contributions from the biggest technology players to help enterprises deliver on the goals of Social Business Software.

Give JiveWorld09 Feedback, Get 5 iTunes Songs!

megan@jivesoftware.com — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:18:58 GMT

In case you have not received the email request to complete a JiveWorld09 evaluation, I've posted the details here. Look forward to your responses!

Thank you for attending the inaugural JiveWorld09 community conference last week. While we've heard from many of you that the conversations, learning, and networking were fantastic, we'd appreciate getting formal feedback.

JiveWorld09 Attendee Survey
Please take 5 minutes to complete the event survey. In return, we’ll give you 5 iTunes songs. While your feedback can be anonymous, if you want to get the iTunes songs, you'll need to provide us your name and email address so we can send the iTunes gift certificate to you. Click here to start the survey.

Avatar Photos
If you participated in the photo shoot Saturday evening, you'll receive an email of your avatar photo within the next two weeks. If you do not receive it by November 15th, please email jiveworld@jivesoftware.com.

JiveWorld 2010 -- Where & When?
We're glad so many of you inquired about next year's event. We'll announce the date and location for JiveWorld 2010 in December. In the meantime, stay in touch with everyone here in the JiveWorld Community.

Conference Materials
Sign up here to be notified when JiveWorld09 conference videos and presentations are available.

We'll send out an email as soon as we've processed the conference collateral and got it ready for prime time. We're estimating about 2 weeks to get the material posted.

Keep In Touch

While the JiveWorld09 conference is over; continue the dialogue here in the JiveWorld Community

Release Day! 2.5.18, 3.0.9 and I'm Very Pleased to Announce: 4.0.0!

communities@jivesoftware.com — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 21:30:33 GMT

New releases today: 10/30/09

Downloads are available via your purchases page. (Note: 4.0 will appear later this weekend.)

Jive SBS 4.0.0

Tons of great documentation and what's new details on our website: http://www.jivesoftware.com.

Full Documentation

Release Notes

Full Support Included for:

Red Hat Enterprise 4 (32 and 64 bit)

Red Hat Enterprise 5 (32 and 64 bit)

Limited Support for: (currently lacking support for MS Office Integration feature functionality)

SUSE Linux Enterprise (32 and 64 bit)

No Support for:

Solaris, coming in future releases. Will update this document when dates are known for certain.

Language support: translations will be available by 4.0.2

Jive SBS 3.0.9

Full Documentation

Changelog

Known Issues

Clearspace 2.5.18

Full Documentation

Changelog

Known Issues

Jive's Got an App for That...

chris.morace@jivesoftware.com — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 00:51:05 GMT

"This is huge."

This is a recurring statement each and every time we demo the new Jive iPhone application and Blackberry capabilities for a customer. Social Business Software has matured rapidly and grown by leaps and bounds since the early days of wikis and blogging. But as long as our customers remained tethered to their computers, we knew we could only take the Social Business revolution so far.

Our recent announcement of the new Jive SBS 4.0 puts that problem to rest, giving people access to all of the same content and conversations they’ve worked with at their desks, extending this experience to the iPhone and Blackberry. We believe that by extending Jive to mobile devices in a meaningful way, we are making it even easier for people to get hooked on Jive. Not only that, but something about the iPhone is a lightning rod for creativity and innovation. I've gotten more incredible ideas as feedback since we started sharing this app than any piece of software I've ever built. I truly believe that within a year this application is going to fundamentally change the way people work.

As our customer Kevin Smyth, CIO at Cerner stated so eloquently:

"We are thrilled to see Jive extend the platform to the iPhone, replicating the desktop experience in a rich, seamless way. The ability to download the application straight from the Apple Apps Store is going to support rapid adoption."

We certainly hope so, but seeing is believing. Check out the screenshots. I dare you not to get hooked.

Customer Award Winners Rock JiveWorld

communities@jivesoftware.com — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 21:45:24 GMT

In addition to having a steller line up of customer presenters at JiveWorld, we also launched our 1st annual Jive SBS Awards.

Six customers were called out for their outstanding efforts in exemplifying the business outcomes that Social Business Software can generate during a main stage presentation at the event.

Checkout the winner highlights.

Business Impact – United Business Media, a global media company with brands such as PRNewswire and TechWeb, was selected for its community deployment of Jive SBS, and its role in the strategic vision of the company. UBM’s community is not simply an “after thought" for the organization, but has the support and attention of the company’s senior leadership. Within the first year of deployment, its community has grown to over 5,000 users, working in 35 countries; users have created around 25,000 pages and generated around 3 million page views and the results: greater efficiencies, cost reductions and revenue increases to the organization.

UBM and Jivers presenting the award -- more photos coming to the JiveWorld community shortly

User Experience - NIKE, Inc. was selected for its innovative use of Jive to better connect its global network of marketers with the digital assets they need to drive the brand forward. Although NIKE has a sophisticated Content Management System (CMS) in place, it was difficult to navigate for marketers who weren't yet trained on the CMS application. By using Jive as a social layer above the CMS, NIKE marketers around the world can quickly access and share approved media assets in a single location.

Community Innovation – The National Journal Group, the leading source of non partisan reporting on the current political environment and emerging policy trends, was selected for its ground breaking 3121 platform, powered by Jive. 3121 is the first professional networking tool designed exclusively for members of congress and their senior staff, federal agency executives and government affairs professionals.

Community Adoption – CSC, a global leader in providing technology-enabled solutions and services, was selected for the launch of its internal community "C3: Connect. Communicate. Collaborate." Through the tenacity, credibility and trustworthiness of those involved, the CSC team secured a phenomenal level of executive endorsement from the onset and established a clear linkage between its "enterprise 2.0" initiatives to the company’s core business strategic objectives. Through enabling a strong global advocate network and allowing collaboration patterns to emerge, C3 enjoyed viral success in only 20 weeks, achieving 25,000 registered users, over 2000 new groups and generating over 1 million page views a month.

Social Business Software Champion(s) – Two winners were selected in this category: Kaiser Permanente and Swiss Re.

Kaiser Permanente's IdeaBook, powered by Jive, is an internal online community aimed at capitalizing on the strength of its 165,000 employees and 14,000 physicians by facilitating knowledge sharing and increasing collaboration and productivity. IdeaBook's rising adoption among employees -- it's adding more than 2,000 users per month -- has been made possible by the efforts of a dedicated and thoughtful communication and technology planning team, key leader participation and advocacy efforts such as real life case studies and user anecdotes.
Swiss Re operates in more than 20 countries and provides its expertise and services as an reinsurer for property and casualty as well as life and health business. Traditional reinsurance products are complemented by insurance-based corporate finance solutions. Swiss Re took a community centric approach to collaboration and provided a business platform for virtual teams, expert networks, projects, learning groups and other communities. More than 10,000 employees got access to the tool and within two weeks after the launch, more than 130 new groups were created.

(You can also read the official press release.)

Announcing 4.0: A Blockbuster Release

communities@jivesoftware.com — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:30:04 GMT

It's been a thoroughly enjoyable couple weeks as we've gotten to preview Jive SBS 4.0 to a handful of customers from a variety of industries. Always fun to showcase the new stuff, especially when they dig it. And they did. If this were a movie we had to promote, we would have no shortage of those pithy quotes to use ("A non-stop tour de force", "Ice Cube's Best Work!"). In our case, the quotes were things like "jaw-dropping" and "awesome." Here's a real quick summary:

Going Deep: Having been a part of so many major customer rollouts over the last few years, it was clear that we needed to go deeper into our customer's work lives. This paved the way for our integration with Microsoft Office and SharePoint.

Going Out: Social media monitoring has become an incredibly important activity for businesses, but they've had no way to distribute or collaborate on the insights / analytics. Enter the Jive Market Engagement Solution, now integrated into 4.0. SBS + SMM = Faster, better decisions at the moment of pain or opportunity.

Going Wide: So many of our customers now are working outside the firewall with customers and partners, that they need a way to bridge the firewall and pull all the pieces together. Jive Bridging takes this concept to a level never achieved before.

Going on the Road: Mobile. Can't ignore it. It's a part of everything we do these days. So we developed a iPhone app (an information addict's dream) and better tools for working from a Blackberry

This is a huge release for us and we're thrilled with it. I'll let you judge for yourself though, and hopefully you'll have your own pithy quotes.

To our customers – thank you for your enthusiasm, creativity and partnership. To my fellow Jivers – thanks for the hard work, and tenacity. This is just the beginning.

With the magnitude of the Jive SBS 4.0 release, jive bloggers decided to team up on the news and split it into digestible pieces. In this series of posts, we delve deep into the new mobile tools, bridging public and private realms together, deep Microsoft Office integration, and provide a high level perspective of Jive SBS 4.0.

Bill Lynch on Jive Connects for Microsoft Office

David Greenberg on Jive Bridging

Dave

Making Microsoft and SBS Jive

communities@jivesoftware.com — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 13:07:02 GMT

SBS 4.0 is all about closing the gap between the way business tools MAKE people work and the way we WANT to work. And let’s face it, most of us work within Microsoft Office. Jive recently announced a new content management strategy with Microsoft SharePoint integration as a first step. But for SBS to be adopted broadly in enterprises, that social layer has to reach not only across content silos, but also to Word, Excel, PowerPoint and the like. So we’re going the next step to integrate with Microsoft Office to help its 600 million users be more social.

As part of the 4.0 announcement this morning, we introduced the Jive Connects for Microsoft Office. This a simple plug-in that allows multiple authors and contributors to make comments and changes on an Office file simultaneously with automatic synchronization of each other's changes. When users create and save Office content, it gets published in their Jive activity stream, which invites comments, discussions, and constructive feedback. Before, users would have to upload the file to Jive then individually download it. With the plug-in, that synchronization to Jive occurs directly from Office.

This eliminates two classic headaches:

Version control: one user can work on the graphics of a PowerPoint presentation while another is working on the script and see changes in the file as they happen. Confusion is eliminated because there is only one synchronized version of a document available to users, which also ensures that everyone is working from the same content.
Reply All as your collaboration tool: it eliminates reliance on email to share and review content by providing a unique Jive URL for every saved document that can be accessed by any user with appropriate access. In fact, non-Office users can preview and provide inline comments to any Microsoft Word, Excel, or PowerPoint file as well as any PDF.

So for all of us who live in Microsoft Office, things just got a whole lot better.

I'd also like to thank our partner DocVerse who helps power this solution. You can read more at Shan Sinha's blog, DocVerse's CEO.

Dave Hersh on Jive SBS 4.0

David Greenberg on Jive Bridging

Building a Better Bridge for Cross-Community Conversations

communities@jivesoftware.com — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:21:06 GMT

We at Jive are obviously a bit biased, but we are big believers in the idea of “community.” Online communities have the power to connect people, unearth game changing ideas, and give voice to people who otherwise might not be heard. But despite having drunk the kool-aid, I think anyone who manages an online community will tell you it’s not all rainbows and unicorns. For many companies, it can sometimes feel as if there is a river of activity and conversations happening, but no easy way to capture the sentiments, ideas and insights in a seamless way that allows the organization to take action on what they learn.

That’s why our customers are so excited about the Jive Bridging module in 4.0. In just a few clicks, you can capture a conversation happening in the community and begin socializing it within the organization – behind the firewall – gathering input and feedback almost instantly, and then providing a response just as easily. This is going WAY beyond what others have been promising with Social CRM.

Dave Hersh on Jive SBS 4.0

Bill Lynch on Jive Connects for Microsoft Office

Preview of upcoming Jivespace & Supportal upgrade to SBS 4.0!

communities@jivesoftware.com — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 23:30:51 GMT

Hello, Jivespace users and viewers!

Jive SBS 4.0 is generating quite a bit of buzz out in the marketplace, as well as here in Support. We are excited about the new features we'll be taking advantage of when we upgrade, including some additional features and functionality in our Supportal customization. Please read on to find out what is coming up in about a month!

First, the Vision

Jivespace started out with a focus on technical conversations and customer support. Looking ahead, the vision for Jivespace is broadening to be a more connected communication ecosystem for technical and business people from the Jive team, customers, prospective customers, and partners. The first step of this vision has already occurred (Oct. 3) by establishing a Business Conversations space and merging into that space all the content and conversations from a Jive community previously called Clearstep. Many Jivespace members were also members of Clearstep, and, as just one example of the benefits to members, they now only have to worry about 1 set of login credentials.

With the upgrade to 4.0 in the near future, there are many additional features that will significantly help bring this vision to life. Many of these new features are highlighted further below. However, more than just new features, Jive is thinking about this community in a much more holistic way, and we are dedicated to making it a showcase of how businesses need to be operating by breaking down all the silos both within and outside a company's four walls.

Changes to the Supportal

Transition to Social Groups

We are making a big change when upgrading to 4.0: moving customers from spaces to social groups! As we continue to evolve our support spaces, we have added additional functionality for membership. One of the biggest advantages to moving to social groups is that we get membership for free! We had been duplicating membership functionality, which, when looking at it from a higher level, really didn't make sense! Social group are another way to align with our vision for Jivespace.

Cases and discussions

Both discussions and support cases will coexist in your customer group. This lets you easily engage with other groups at Jive Software without having to wonder, "Where should this go? It's not a support case."

Improved Severity 1 handling

We continually refine our support for major customer issues and have three changes in this release which help get us to the next level.

Severity 1 cases are now re-pageable

When a Severity 1 case is submitted by a customer with Premium Support, our on-call engineer is paged. Once the on-call engineer acknowledges this page, no additional pages will be sent. Typically this is just what we want: an alert to get our attention for a S1 issue. However, there are times where an on-call engineer asks for additional information or has an otherwise lengthy wait for a customer response. During business hours this isn't a big deal, but off hours, in the middle of the night, it can be a burden.

To resolve this we've made S1 issues re-pagable. When the S1 issue switches status to 'Waiting on Jive' during off hours, a new round of pages will be sent out. This allows us the freedom to catch a few winks or otherwise step away from the computer while waiting for a response. This will also help us increase our responsiveness to customers, as we'll be alerted immediately when the status of the case changes.

Integrated RCA cases (Root Cause Analysis)

Traditionally, Support has created separate Root Cause Analysis (RCA) cases for S1 issues upon request. This was usually an ad-hoc exercise for sharing our findings. Moving forward we'd like to solidify this process. To improve this practice we've implemented a 'Create RCA Case' feature available to our Support Engineers. With one click, an Engineer can create a case based on a defined RCA template. When doing so, we automatically link the S1 issue case to the RCA case for increased visibility and navigation. Making it easy to create RCA cases will drive us to create RCAs for S1s at a higher rate than ever before, which in turn will help us ensure we are either prepared for this issue next time, or--better yet--stop it all together. With increased visibility to RCA cases for our customers as well as the Support Engineers, resolution time for repeat issues should be dramatically reduced.

Automatic and Proactive follow-ups on Severity 1 issues

Severity 1 issues were not seeing the love they deserved. We care as much about closing-out customer-reported S1 issues as you do, and with a new proactive follow-up tool in place, any S1 cases that become inactive for a couple days will send a friendly reminder to both the customer and the assigned Support Engineer. Alternatives are to 1) decrease the severity of your case when it is no longer a Severity1 issue, or 2) use the previously mentioned RCA ability to close out S1 issues quickly and effectively!

Upgrading to 4.0 = New features!

Without a doubt, 4.0 is Jive's biggest release ever, and we plan to leverage every applicable aspect for our public-facing communities. In the Support area we're especially excited to use the new bridging capability with our internal community which will allow for more streamlined communication between our Support and Engineering teams.

We occasionally need to engage our Engineering team to help with complex support cases. Using automatic linking and the ability to push and pull messages in either direction will be a huge help! We are also jazzed about the improved HTML email support, as well as the ever-improving RTE. In addition, we have some amazing new functionality that will make viewing uploaded MSOffice or PDF documents a breeze, with no need to download.

A brief highlight of some of the new Jive elements you won't see on Jivespace but you should definitely learn about are Jive Market Engagement, our SharePoint Connector, new mobile elements (that we can't talk much about until the actual launch in a few days), and new reporting capabilities.

Thank you,

Will French, Support Manager

Adam Mertz, Product Marketing Manager

VJ Culture, Slam Poet Rives & more cool stuff at JW09!

suzame.tong@jivesoftware.com — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 06:04:26 GMT

We interrupt your current programming (killer feature announcement, meeting at the XYZ bar) to bring you what's else is HOT at JiveWorld09

VJ Culture.

That's his name (though no one would argue that video jockeying doesn't have its own culture).

Just as a DJ mixes sound, a VJ mixes images. At Jiveworld09, cutting-edge VJ Culture (a.k.a. Grant Davis) will “mash up” the JiveWorld09 community, including snippets of the JiveWorld video contest entries.

VJ Culture has worked with Beck, Mary J. Blige, P-Diddy, The Rapture, Common, Eryka Badu, Jazzy Jeff, Paul Oakenfold, Tiesto, REM, Pearl Jam, and about every other top 100 DJ.

Check out his work, and imagine it with snippets of the Jive community. (Which reminds me, we extended the video contest deadline to 10/21 -- c'mon people! Enter!)

Rock Your Avatar with a Professional Photo Shoot

Don't you almost always notice when someone changes his or her avatar?

You can tell good lighting and a great expression, even when it's the size of a postage stamp.

So just imagine all the buzz you'll hear after you upload your hip new avatar from JiveWorld09 -- I can already see the Twitterstream of compliments.

At Wednesday night’s conference party, you can get your “glamour shot” avatar professionally photographed by our conference photographer, Colin Vincent. We’ve even lined up a makeup artist for the gals (and even the guys).

So plan to get in front of the camera and strike a pose — we’ll email you the photo after the show.

Rives' Slam Poetry, Jive-Style

Nationally acclaimed slam poet, Rives, is in his own words “a man of words that make more sense on the stage than they do on the page.”

You've probably seen him on TED telling a story of mixed emoticons. But nothing will compare to experience Rives in person at JiveWorld09. He'll be combing JiveWorld09 for the inside scoop on the Jive Community, and will blow your mind during his morning and afternoon sessions on Mainstage.

"Get Together" Photo Booth

Last but not least....

In case you haven’t noticed, JiveWorld09’s creative theme features photo booth photography.

At the show, there’ll be a booth (sponsored by Syncapse) so you can get your own souvenir photo strip. Don’t be shy! Grab your fellow customers and a couple of Jivers, pop in to create your own fun photo strips.

Phew! That's it. Are you ready to rock your JiveWorld yet?

OK, back to your regularly scheduled programming (Jive moments, public/internal communities...)

Jive Positioned as a Leader in New Magic Quadrant for Social Software in the Workplace

chris.morace@jivesoftware.com — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 23:45:15 GMT

Today at Gartner Symposium the Magic Quadrant for Social Software in the Workplace was unveiled, and I feel privileged to share that Jive Software was positioned in the Leaders quadrant. In today's business world the Gartner Magic Quadrant is arguably the most recognized and respected qualitative assessment of a market and its participants. This recognition is particularly meaningful because of the diligence with which Gartner selects leaders by focusing on maturity of offerings, and the vision necessary to continue to lead a market. The process is exhaustingly thorough and involves hundreds of customer conversations, which is why companies across the world rely on Gartner's guidance for selecting vendors. It is without a doubt a privilege and an honor to be recognized in this way.

I'd like to take this opportunity to do three things. The first is to express sincere appreciation to the hundreds of companies who had the vision and foresight to recognize the potential for what Jive Social Business Software could mean to their companies. Enterprises like Kaiser Permanente, United Business Media, Yum!, and Manheim invested in Jive early on and have played an integral part in shaping the direction of our products. They are helping us realize a vision of transforming the way customers, partners, and employees connect with each other to achieve unprecedented results for their businesses.

The second is to pause and reflect on what an amazing moment in time this is for Jive as a company. In what was one of the worst economies in recent history we just wrapped up our 4^th consecutive quarter of record revenues with 100% year over year growth in Q3. We closed a second round of investment from Sequoia Capital who has an unmatched track record of identifying successful technology companies that transform the way we live and work. We are approaching our inaugural users' conference, JiveWorld, that in a year of the non-conference and the un-conference, sold out far in advance and has an incredible line-up of customers speaking about their success. And, we are releasing Jive SBS 4.0 which is easily the largest, most impactful release in our company's history.

And lastly, I would like to reaffirm our commitment to our customers. Being recognized as a leader is an honor, but I know I speak for every Jiver when I say that it just increases the belief, determination, and commitment we bring to work every day. Thank you for helping us grow to this stage and allowing us to do what we love. See you next week at JiveWorld!

(UPDATE: You can now get a complimentary copy of the MQ Report on our Analyst Coverage page)

Some Great News to Share

communities@jivesoftware.com — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 21:53:27 GMT

I have some exciting news to share about Jive, and I also want to give a review of the past quarter to give a measure of our progress.

We just closed our Series B funding round with our VC partner, Sequoia Capital who invested an additional $12 million into Jive. We just issued a press release, and I want to give some additional context on how we will use the funding. There's a very simple four part answer:

It's about innovation. We are going to continue to expand the Jive SBS product footprint by dramatically increasing our R&D efforts. We're doing a lot more hiring! In just the last month, we have added 11 new Jivers with 10 more starting in the next two weeks. If you're interested, take a look at our open jobs. We're also going to be pursuing smart acquisitions that complement our portfolio.
It's about customers. We will build out our customer-facing teams to further support the success of our clients and to grow the company.
It's about partners. We have seen some great success with channel partners and we will be building out that ecosystem to get Jive onto the desktops and mobile devices of more customers. And we'll continue to improve the "partner-friendly" aspects of our application to allow for deep yet hassle-free customization and integration.
It's about championing SBS. Jive has built a great community around SBS in the last few years, and we want to continue to spread that gospel. I'm happy when I see new customers say, “I never knew I could do that!” But I'm even happier when I hear them say, "This has changed how I work, and I want more."

Looking at Q3, we had another great quarter and again achieved a record for quarterly revenue, with more than 100% growth compared to Q3 of 2008. We added a number of new customers and a number of existing customers expanded their deployments. Our services team continued their outstanding track record of delivering customer success. And we had some great news in the government sector.

But that only tells half the story. Suffice it to say that Jive is in the midst of the greatest period of product innovation in the company's history. We have recently and will soon deliver new products that will push the envelope on what people think Social Business Software can do.

More to come very soon.