This week I had the opportunity to speak with Jive Software. I’ll share some notes with you. Let me preface this reminding you that Jive “scored” on or near the top of both Forrester’s Wave report and Gartner’s Magic Quadrant reports (both rather recent). This alone is not the way to make a software selection. It does indicate that very good things are happening there. I’ll preface my post with a short commentary on these reports — and use this to set up the discussion about Jive.
I cannot say too much about the MQ report since I’m not familiar with methodology that Gartner uses in developing their analysis. I did read it carefully and found it valuable in many areas, but left me wanting more in areas that were not addressed. On the plus side – I found it was very broad and addressed many vendors, even those that don’t have a significant market presence. Moreover, the commentary on each was quite informed. On the minus side – I think there is an opportunity to add some more clarity to the graphics by grouping vendors together along certain dimensions. The report does provide lots of details to help — but the resulting chart left me wishing there was a way I could filter and refresh, or have other charts.
As for the Wave report – I am familiar with the methodology that Forrester uses. It’s strength is that you can indeed filter and refresh to get a chart that is more relevant to you. The limitations are: 1. it is not nearly as broad in covering the vendor landscape (for good reasons though), and 2. it is specifically focused on external communities (by design). Had I still been with Forrester, it was our plan that I leverage the underlying data that Jeremiah collected, updated it (adding and removing vendors and criteria that are relevant to internal use-cases), and republished it to create another Wave report which just addresses the application of community platforms for internal uses. Let me point to the endnote of this post where Jeremiah clarified (yet again) that his report is for the interactive marketer, not the internal collaborator. The way the market has been evolving in the past few years, people see the distinction between the external use and internal use of communities and community tools.
And this backdrop leads me into the topic of the conversation I had with Jive. Prior to their most recent announcement, Jive offered two community/collaboration products — one for the internal use within companies, the other for the purpose of creating external communities. Indeed many of the “social vendors” offer both options (with different features) — and some have a pretty good footing in both markets, though many focus on one or the other. I believe there are forces that are blurring this distinction in the minds of some vendors, perhaps including these two:
- Vendors are now providing more features to their platform – trying to keep up with their competitors. And most of these features have to be added to both platforms. Uniting the fundamental capabilities into one code base will simplify the technical costs of maintaining their underlying product.
- Some users are looking at blended use of communities – graduating to, what I call, Phase 2 of Enterprise 2.0, where the external boundary around the company becomes more permeable and allows (managed) conversation flow between employees, partners, customers, prospects, and others.
I don’t know if these were factors for Jive, but I do know that their latest version (SBS 3.0) is a merger of the two uses into a single platform, one that offers multiple packages. Here’s their description, reading it from the bottom. There is a foundation layer of technology that is needed within social software — this includes the basic features that people use directly, as well as the plumbing that makes this work as a package. One new feature in this layer is social bookmarking — something that plays heavily in Lotus Connections and Connectbeam, and is now in Jive too. Also new to this version are some user experience improvements. As I see it, one of Jive’s competitive strengths is its highly usable interface — so improving this will simply raise the bar on the high bar that Jive has already set.
In the middle of the chart are the “modules” which provide value features above the fundamental features. Analytics include a whole host of new reporting features (something that plays heavily in Telligent). This is a very important addition to the mix. Bridging is the mechanism that manages the view of the permeable boundary — probably the most noteworthy feature of this version from a market strategy perspective. Insights provides a some analysis to describe engagement and sentiment (the areas that I feel indicate that we have reached a new maturity in social media). And Video optimized hosting and streaming — which has use externally in driving engagement as well internal use for things like employee training.
Where this comes together is on the top — the “centers”. Clients license an appropriate center, providing them with an subset of modules and features. So for example, someone using Jive for internal employee engagement might not need a sentiment analysis component to their community, but a external community driven by marketing would. In addition to the classification of Employee and Marketing, Jive has added centers for Innovation and Support – two other significant use-cases for community software. So Jive SBS 3.0 is now one product, configurable to meet the needs of (at least) four major uses.
On the plus side: there’s even more to Jive now. On the minus side: buyers may not understand the new packaging without more help. Buyers want to know that a product is for them. This change may confuse some buyers who only see their needs and are unsure how Jive applies to those needs.
Bottom line: Jive’s market is strong. When people say “I’m looking at E2.0 platforms, like…” - Jive is usually on that list. And there’s more to come from them soon.
