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!

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:

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.