Jive SBS Syndication Feed

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

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.

Jiving in the Federal Government

communities@jivesoftware.com — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 04:11:47 GMT

When co-founders Matt Tucker and Bill Lynch started Jive in the dark moments of 2001, they probably couldn’t have imagined that their idea would one day become a trusted solution to government agencies as they tackle some of the big challenges of our time. 8 years later, we’re standing shoulder to shoulder with the U.S. government to bring the power of Social Business Software to the complex task of serving and protecting over 300 million people.

In today’s press release we reference how our work with the U.S. intelligence community, and organizations like NASA, the U.S. Army, Air Force Medical Services is helping to connect the dots – agency to agency, department to department, people to people and system to system. While programs like A-Space have gained the buzz- worthy moniker "Facebook for Spies," for the Defense Intelligence Agency, this is serious business.

Our success speaks to the Federal Government's vision and commitment to following the Presidential call for a more collaborative government. Our success is also a testament to the strength of Jive’s SBS solution, and the security it offers.

But this is only the beginning. Stay tuned!

Knowing Which Direction to Take

communities@jivesoftware.com — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 18:40:15 GMT

Are we really in the midst of a market rebound? I'll let my broker figure that one out. But as I look at the market, one thing has become clear to me. A broad cross-section of companies see the window of opportunity -- the potential to change the way they work so they can perform better, no matter the economic conditions. This is why the application of Social Business Software has become much more interesting and strategic as of late. Just look at the Lufthansa and Toshiba announcements we've made in the last few weeks.

But to take advantage of that opening, they know they have to move aggressively and accurately. That's why we are working so hard on new innovations that will expand the Jive offering in exciting ways. It's also why we're investing aggressively in all areas of the company - products, services, sales and marketing. And it's a big reason why there are more and more Jivers around in the U.S. and in Europe. In fact our "new" Bay Area office has expanded so fast that we're opening a bigger one as soon as possible.

On a personal note, my family and I recently recognized another window of opportunity. As I find myself back and forth between Portland and Palo Alto every week, we've decided to move back down to the Bay Area where my wife is from and where we spent many years. And as Jive has continued to expand aggressively, our presence in the Bay Area is becoming a bigger part of our growth (employees, customers, partners, and investors). Portland will remain Jive's physical headquarters -- our Portland team is absolutely incredible and will continue to be a big part of our growth.

Where I live has become less important as I spend a lot of time on the road visiting customers, prospective customers and partners. Jive is a distributed company that is great at working across geographical boundaries - we practice what we preach in a very deep way and use social software to stay connected. Our executive team lives in Portland, California, Phoenix and Texas, and we're hiring the best people we can find wherever they are located. As we like to say, "our real headquarters are in Brewspace" (our internal instance of Jive).

Irrespective of my base of operations, I will be spending significant time in both offices - when I am not traveling elsewhere. And I'll be completing the move soon to try to get our kids into the school year as quickly as possible.

Stay tuned for some exciting things to come from Jive. And to learn everything from the top Jive experts, join us at JiveWorld on October 27-29 in San Francisco.

Closing the Books on Q2 with a Cloud-Based Solution, a Deeper Ecosystem, and a New Office in Palo Alto

communities@jivesoftware.com — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 16:00:51 GMT

The past few months have flown by, due in no small part to how heads down we’ve been. In addition to pulling off another record sales quarter, the product team has been busy working on an amazing release and we’ve all been working hard on some huge strategic projects around SBS. So as the summer heat is in full swing and we have a minute to smell the roses, I wanted to share and reflect on some of the great things that have happened over the course of the last three months here at Jive.

SAP partnership - The Jive ecosystem is growing rapidly, through ground-breaking partnerships with companies like SAP. We're integrating their BusinessObjects OnDemand platform with our Social Business Software to create a whole new level of understanding around online community dynamics. I have seen the potential here and it is absolutely inspiring. Expect more in the coming months as we unite world-class software with social technologies.
Jive Express - At Jive, we take cloud computing very seriously, but are doing it in a pragmatic way that allows our customers to adopt whatever model works for their deployment. A big step in this direction was Jive Express, which lets teams or departments get up and running fast, in a cost effective model for smaller deployments within large organizations. They also really like that we've developed this so they can migrate to on-premise if needed, or easily migrate to the full-blown version of our Employee Engagement Center for increased levels of customization and company-wide deployments.
Palo Alto - I just got back from three excellent weeks in the Bay Area where I got to work out of our new office for awhile and assist with some recruiting and customer visits. Outside of the long commute from Mill Valley to Palo Alto, it was great to be with the team down there and get to see so many of our customers. “Jive South” serves as a nice complement to our phenomenal team in Portland as it puts us closer to our rapidly growing customer base in Silicon Valley, as well as provides access to even more top notch talent.
A customer, Premier Farnell - I'd also like to take a moment to highlight Premier Farnell, to showcase some of the great uses-cases of SBS. They are a multi-channel distributor of electronic components, who built a public community for electronic design engineers. With support from their supplier community and industry experts, the Element14 Community brings together all of the information electronic design engineers need to be successful -- from design conception to production. Instead of searching a variety of vendor websites, engineers can solicit design feedback and component suggestions from trusted peers in this community. And, when engineers are ready to make a purchase, they can do this seamlessly via element14 instead of an assortment of vendor sites.

Q3 won’t be restful either to say the least. Lots to do on the product front, lots of new customers going live and we’ll all be getting ready for JiveWorld. Hope to see you there!

Welcome to JiveWorld - a note from the CEO

communities@jivesoftware.com — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 17:47:42 GMT

We've been talking about hosting a customer event for a couple years now, but for a variety of reasons we decided to hold off. We just didn't want to do an event unless it was going to be insanely great. Well, now we're ready.

All the pundits believe this is the year for Enterprise 2.0. At Jive, we know it. We have seen first hand the transformational returns on investment from companies that are embracing social business software. The revolution has started: employees are demanding a new way to work, boards are demanding more efficient organizations, and customers and partners are demanding a voice. There's no doubt in our minds that 2009 is a turning point for how work gets done in the enterprise.

But this tipping point remains largely an abstract concept when you've got your own deployment to consider. And we're no exception. At Jive, we practice what we preach and have always strived for one world in which everyone has a voice, whether you're an employee, customer, prospect or partner, and that this cacaphony of voices helps us build a better product, make smarter decisions and form deep connections where none would have existed before. But as much as we love our software, we know that this can't all be done online and in fact, SBS can be amplified when augmented with face to face connections. So I can only imagine what's in store when we all come together to learn from each other, share ideas and best practices and form those connections. At JiveWorld09. Together.

Judging from how hard everyone at Jive is working on this event, I can tell it's going to be a conference experience unlike any other, and well worth your time.

I look forward to seeing you in San Francisco this October.

Ben Kiker Joins as Jive's CMO

communities@jivesoftware.com — Tue, 19 May 2009 21:27:22 GMT

When I first interviewed Ben a few months ago, it only took a few minutes before I was trying to sign him up. Finding a good marketing exec is one of the toughest challenges out there -- very few people have the gift to bring big ideas together with an execution mindset, the ability to build a category while working closely with the field, partners and customers; and most importantly, a talent for making the people around them better. In short, Ben is a hugely talented leader who brings the energy and focus needed to put more distance between us and the competition in the Social Business Software (SBS) category.

Ben will be responsible for Jive's global marketing strategy, in addition to spearheading strategic partnerships and corporate development activities. He is joining us at a pivotal time in our evolution where, despite the brutal economy, we continue to post record-breaking quarters and demonstrate market momentum. Ben's track record in scaling companies for growth and success, and capitalizing on unique opportunities, is going to be pivotal in our strategy.

Before joining Jive, Ben was the Chief Marketing Officer for Interwoven, one of the fastest growing companies in the web content optimization market, through their recent acquisition by Autonomy. He has also held executive management positions for technology leaders including Siebel Systems, Onyx Software, and Clarify (where he worked alongside fellow executive Tony Zingale, now a Jive Board member). In addition, Ben has led product marketing, corporate marketing, field marketing, and partner teams for both emerging companies as well as billion-dollar organizations, and has been very closely involved with the industry analysts. You can learn more about his credentials on LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com/pub/ben-kiker/0/167/7a4).

You'll be hearing more from Ben soon (he'll have a blog shortly) as we get him ramped up!

Jive had its best quarter. Ever.

communities@jivesoftware.com — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 16:59:01 GMT

You may have seen my recent blog post on Jive's New York Times article (a lot of former schoolmates did apparently as I got deluged on Facebook about the tattoo). In addition to the tattoo, I also mentioned that we had "one of our biggest quarters ever and we have never been stronger." Now that the books are officially closed, let me expand on it:

We had our best sales quarter in the history of the company.
We were cash flow positive (for the second quarter in a row).
We signed up 70 new customers.
We expanded our Bay Area presence with a new office in Palo Alto.
Over 100% year-over-year revenue growth.

I don't want all my blogs to be "rah rah" regurgitated press releases, but I do want to share how thrilled I am with our team and with what we were able to accomplish. It was a Herculean effort to have our biggest product release ever with SBS and to add such a huge roster of great, forward-thinking clients, all in the context of the worst downturn we have seen.

No new tattoos for this quarter's results, but I'm all ears on ideas to celebrate future quarters.

Thanks for your continued support.

Jive in the New York Times

communities@jivesoftware.com — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 00:22:19 GMT

There is no question that this is one of the toughest economic downturns in history. Luckily, Jive has been blessed with success and has been able to stay a step ahead of the recession. As we head into of the second quarter of 2009, we are riding in from one of our biggest quarters ever and we have never been stronger.

And it always helps to have press to help drive home that point. Today the New York Times published an article outlining how we got to this point. "Start-Up Gets Course in Survival " discusses the steps we've taken to stay healthy and competitive in this economy, with guidance from our funding partner Sequoia Capital:

The changes that Jive has made since the Sequoia meeting illustrate the ways in which young technology companies have trimmed costs and narrowed their focus in an effort to stay alive. “Jive is the poster child. They nailed it,” Jim Goetz, the Sequoia partner who is on Jive’s board, told The Times. In the quarter ended in March, Jive booked higher revenue than any quarter in its history, and it plans to start hiring again.

It's a great piece. My only complaint was that I wasn't a huge fan of the "near tears" line . "Sincere" would have been much better for my ego. Also, I don't think it captured the impact of our original leadership team and how critical they were to our success as a company. This company was built on the strength of some great individuals and while it's easy for a story to position it as "not scaling", the truth is a much richer tapestry. We went through a transition and in some cases it's better to bring different people with different backgrounds to help that transition. But I stand by our original team as a solid group of dedicated individuals -- it was a tough transition and we wouldn't be who we are without those folks.

Changes at Jive

communities@jivesoftware.com — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 00:17:45 GMT

So far, 2009 has been the best year for Jive that I can remember. Our launch of Jive SBS 3.0 was hugely successful, the product has a huge and compelling set of features, and SBS as a category (http://www.jivesoftware.com/jivespace/blogs/jivetalks/2009/03/10/welcome-to-the-social-business-revolution--introducing-jive-sbs-30) is expanding faster than we imagined. Every member of the Jive team has pulled more than their weight the past few months and it's been a joy to work with such a solid team. It's also clear that we're on the other side of a big company transition -- what I like to think of as going from a ‘big small company’ to a ‘small big company’. It's exactly what we needed to go through as an organization, but with this transition comes change. And one of the tougher transitions for me will be saying goodbye to our Chief Marketing Officer, Sam Lawrence, who is leaving Jive at the end of this month.

Sam is a great friend and a great marketer. He was an instrumental part of moving this company from a small technology vendor to the category leader - from the initial Clearspace direction to developing creative ways to evangelize this new space.

I am going to miss Sam - not just what he's done for Jive, but who he is. His sense of humor and loyalty are unmatched. He has helped in making Jive's first chapter memorable and enjoyable. I'll let Sam talk about what's next for him on his blog, but he'll rock it for sure.

In the meantime, Jive is actively refilling the CMO position and will make an announcement once it is filled.

Welcome to the Social Business Revolution - Introducing Jive SBS 3.0

communities@jivesoftware.com — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 04:54:13 GMT

I've spent a healthy portion of the last month on the road talking to analysts and press about our new release, and it's been one of the most thoroughly enjoyable times I've had as a CEO. Not only is the release packed full of amazing things to talk about, but it's also clear that our vision is closely aligned to that of the analysts and the press, and that this vision is playing out daily with our customers.

The Backdrop

Since we started Jive, we've watched as social computing has changed the lives of over a billion individuals. And we have pushed hard on bringing this revolution to the workplace. And in the last few years, we have seen first-hand how Social Business Software (SBS) can create a marketplace of ideas where people, projects and priorities come together to harness everybody's knowledge, ability and creativity to produce a new asset called social capital. And we have seen how it can create breakthrough returns in the process.

For our customers, SBS is the new enterprise category. The enterprise has been devoid of a new application category since CRM, and they see the advent of social software as the biggest change to happen to the enterprise in fifteen years. It's now spanning every major vertical and the visionary leaders are seeing the gains that can be made by opening up collaboration and focusing on the people. This is especially true in a downturn, where throwing more money at business process software is not going to lead to huge value increases -- you have to look to the areas where there is the most to gain, the white spaces in a company: the people.

Right now, it's too hard, takes too long and costs too much. People spend twenty hours a week managing emails or stuck in meetings. For the company that wants to show huge changes in the input/output equation, you have to think big. You have to think about changing the way you work. The smart companies are already doing it, and they're already seeing the results.

Introducing Jive SBS

What's Important:

1. The Four Centers: The biggest change for the company as a whole is a complete reorganization of our go-to-market strategy around business value -- what we call the four "Centers". Having seen what works and what doesn't, we chose to align ourselves with the transformational business outcomes we know we can produce, and the full sales & services team / product / partnerships and vision to ensure we make our customers successful.

Employee Engagement: Allows employees to get their heads above their cubicles (metaphorically) to see that they are part of a much bigger network of people, and to use this network to dramatically improve their productivity by accessing the best ideas and resources across the entire organization.
Marketing & Sales: Creates awareness, builds leads and maintains a deep and meaningful conversation with customers, and allows sales and marketing organizations to share information, news and connections quickly and easily.
Innovation / R&D: Allows inovation teams to solicit and evaluate ideas and opportunities from customers, partners and employees and reduce time to market dramatically.
Support: Improves the quality and speed of support agent response by providing a turnkey way to access, monitor, archive and connect the appropriate internal or external expertise with the issue at hand.

2. Bridging: Early on we made a strategic decision that customers, partners and employees all needed to be part of SBS -- just focusing on customer communities or behind-the-firewall employee collaboration was a not a long term solution, and our customers (very vocally) backed this up. The power of SBS is that it leverages the collective power of a huge group of people. And in this era, the successful companies are ones that can facilitate that "big conversation" and produce the best decisions and outcomes, which requires including your customers and partners. In this release we our thrilled to have our first push at bridging the gap between different communities, allowing employees to see what customers are saying and to start building a deeper relationship with them.

3. Analytics and Insights: Measuring the success of SBS rollouts is critical. This latest release not only offers an incredibly rich analytics module with out of the box reports and a full data warehouse solution to drive the metrics that matter most to your business, but also a full Insights module that reports on the sentiment and engagement of your marketplace (and even other outside public communities). You can think of it like this: the Analytics module measures what people are doing, the Insights piece manages what they are thinking.

The Insights module is done through a partnership with Networked Insights and is a very powerful tool. You have to check out a demo if you have a chance.

4. Video: Essentially a YouTube for your SBS rollout, the video module allows all the main video formats to be quickly uploaded and available as a first class content type, with all the security, performance and scaling the enterprise needs.

5. Bookmarking: Track what's important through social filtering of content.

What about Clearspace?

Clearspace as a product is fully represented in the Foundation layer above. The core product and architecture has largely remained the same, but we have removed the name Clearspace. Ultimately it was creating brand confusion with the name Jive, and we had to make the call. As much as we loved the name, we had to move on to the next stage of our development as a product and a company.

Now Business is Social

We have put a ton of work into this release and we couldn't be more thrilled. SBS is growing up quickly, and it's proving to be what companies need in this time of uncertainty. Please join us for a live webcast with Nike, Cisco, and Forrester to see how SBSis changing the way work gets done in the enterprise.

New SVP of Sales, Board Member, Forrester Wave and Scoble video

communities@jivesoftware.com — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 05:58:36 GMT

We just finished up one of our best quarters ever, and 2009 is kicking off with a bang. A few very noteworthy items to share with you.

First and most importantly, we formally announced that John McCracken has joined Jive as Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales and that Bill Lanfri has joined the Board of Directors. John is a hugely talented sales leader who has worked with most of our other execs during his time at Mercury (as well as Tony Zingale on our board, the former CEO of Mercury). Bill Lanfri is a very seasoned leader who has seen the technology growth curve many times, and has already made a big impact as an advisor. Both have the experience we need to continue building Jive into a great company and I'm thrilled to have them on board.

Secondly, this past Friday Forrester Research released its WAVE report on Community Platforms. We are excited to be named a leader in the space and we encourage you to read the full report if you're a Forrester client. Jeremiah Owyang, senior analyst at Forrester, is thorough and insightful. It’s an honor to be included with the other vendors and the report is a feather in the cap for the Social Business Software market.

Also worth noting, in the first week of January, Jive’s CMO Sam Lawrence, sat down with Robert Scoble and talked a bit about the company’s plans for the year. He provides a great overview of Social Business Software and really captured the essence of what Jive is working to accomplish. Sam also gives a few hints about what you can expect from Jive in Q1.

All in all, a great start to the year. But there's more to come soon.

Happy New Year, everyone.

Jive Positioned in the Visionaries Quadrant of the 2008 Magic Quadrant for Social Software

communities@jivesoftware.com — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 00:08:10 GMT

Great news for our space. Gartner, Inc. just released the 2008 Magic Quadrant for Social Software. In the latest report, we are positioned in the Visionaries Quadrant. Gartner, Inc. defines companies in this quadrant as follows:

"Visionaries in the market demonstrate a strong understanding of current and future market trends and directions, such as the importance of a flexible and transparent collaboration environment, as well as the value of mutual reinforcement between tools that encourage user contribution and tools that encourage bottom-up group and structure formation. Their products and product road maps display a penchant for innovation, especially in terms of architecture and lightweight integration, while their marketing and R&D efforts are boosted by their alignment with the opensource "ecosystem." The Visionaries in this market have not exhibited the scope of delivery of the Challengers, but have demonstrated vision across a range of capabilities."

--Nikos Drakas, Gartner, Inc., 2008 Social Software Magic Quadrant

If you want to read the full report, you can access it here, compliments of Jive.

We believe that Jive's growth and recognition from Gartner proves that there is a transformative power in community-based collaboration and it really is changing the way companies work. Collaboration continues to be a major area of enterprise investment and, in addition to new customers, we've also seen a lot of growth with existing customers as they add more of their employee base onto Jive's Clearspace application.

About the Magic Quadrant:
The Magic Quadrant is copyrighted October 2008 by Gartner, Inc. and is reused with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner's analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the "Leaders" quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

Announcing 2.5: A Heavy Dose of What it Takes to Make Social Software Work

communities@jivesoftware.com — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 04:15:54 GMT

This latest release is like a giant sandpaper exercise for Clearspace. Now that it's been in the wild with hundreds of large enterprise customers and hundreds of thousands of users banging away at it -- not to mention a team of Jivers sitting alongside these people with their clipboards taking notes -- we've learned quite a bit about what works and what doesn't. What did we hear from our customers?

Fix the RTE (rich text editor)!
Make everything social
Make it easy to find and follow people
Better email / mobile integration
Make it easy to customize
Make the conversations contextual

The RTE feedback was easily the loudest. Nothing will happen if you can't get people to create content easily. So we built what I consider to be the best web RTE on the planet. It's such an enjoyable experience, and makes a world of difference for our customers trying to boost adoption and participation. You have to try it out.

We also really boosted the social features in a way that works for everyone -- not just the Facebook generation. Now it's easy to find people, connect with them, and set up or join groups on the fly. You can also deliver the collaboration on any web page with just a code snippet -- for instance, an e-commerce page on snowshoes could show all the conversations about that snowshoe, or a supply chain application could show all the conversations about that supplier, or posts made by people who work for that supplier.

You should really check out the new features for yourself or take a test drive. This is hands-down the best all-around social software application on the planet. I couldn't be more proud of what this team has created.

Announcing Clearspace 2.0 - A Giant Leap for Enterprise Social Productivity

communities@jivesoftware.com — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 04:23:32 GMT

When we launched Clearspace 1.0 in February of 2007, it was a response to an overwhelming number of enterprise customers saying the same thing: we're stuck between heavyweight collaboration apps (good for file-based workflows, but no one uses them to collaborate) and lightweight Web 2.0 apps like wikis (good for quick adoption, but incomplete, siloed and don't scale). They said, "bring all of these formerly disparate technologies into one system, make it enterprise class, and make it so highly-intuitive that anyone could use it." We did that. And it was very successful.

So now, a little over a year later, and with hundreds of customers under our belt, we're learning a lot. While Clearspace has been very successful as a lightweight way to collaborate and organize content that was historically never captured, there were some consistent issues as our customers tried to get it deployed inside their organization:

How do I drive adoption?
How do I know what to focus on?
How should we manage projects?
How does it work with my Sharepoint content?
How do I involve people outside the firewall?
How do we keep track of changes?

Enter 2.0

The driving force behind the 2.0 release was to take some of these issues head on. A good way to frame the new features (and existing / future features for that matter) is into the big categories of people, focus and work. Here's what we're launching:

People: Expanded profiles and organizational relationships. Find the right people based on the right information, and see exactly where they sit in the organization (full org chart functionality). Plus you can highlight a name and get a mini-profile.

Focus: Personalizable homepage. It's like iGoogle for your work life -- a completely widgitized homepage. No more being overwhelmed by all the content -- now you can provide your own filter to what matters most (what my colleagues are doing, what's popular, my projects, etc.).

Work: Projects, sharing and Sharepoint integration.

Projects: With very few products out there (in between heavyweight project mgmt apps and a spreadsheet), our customers were hungry for the ability to manage projects and coordinate resources at a high level, with features like milestones and tasks.
Sharing: A new cloud-based document sharing service allows you to collaborate with people outside the firewall, even if your software is installed on premise. Your guest user just logs into the service and and can start adding content to your local instance.
Sharepoint Integration: Integration with Sharepoint 2007 allows you to search, browse and link to Sharepoint content from within Clearspace.

There's also a lot of new features under the hood like recording an audit log of actions performed in the admin console, the switch to the Spring and Struts 2, and improvements to the rich text editor. You can learn more in the new Clearspace section of our site.

I've been using the release for a while now, and I'm a huge fan (projects and the widgetized homepage have made the biggest difference in my life). Please download (or test drive online), play around and let us know your thoughts.

New Website

You might also have noticed the new website. Sam, David Greenberg, and team have been hard at work on building a beauty of a site that matches the depth of the new Clearspace release. These guys have done an amazing job and they've been sleeping at the office to get it done. My hats off to them. We would love your feedback on this too, so let us know what you think: