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The Enterprise Collaboration & Social
Software Evaluation Report
Comprehensive Product Evaluations
Sample Edition, Sample License

Vendors reviewed:

Atlassian Jive Software Oracle

Awareness Inc. KickApps SAY Media

blueKiwi LinkedIn Socialtext

Connectbeam Lithium Telligent Systems

DemandMedia MediaWiki Traction Software

Drupal Microsoft Twitter

Facebook MindTouch Wetpaint

Google Ning WordPress

IBM XING

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The Collaboration & Social Software Research is by far the most exhaustive

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software with an eye toward helping enterprises make smart decisions I’ve ever seen.

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Senior Director, Optaros Labs

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The Collaboration & Social Software Research — the most comprehensive and

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detailed analysis of this rapidly developing marketplace available. Of particular
value are the vendor profiles and the authors’ depth of knowledge and understanding.

Dr. Martin De Saulles
Principal Lecturer, University of Brighton, UK

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Setting aside the hype and buzzwords of social media technology, The Real Story Group offers a clear, objective and
comprehensive review of software products and vendors with a specific focus on their applicability to the enterprise.
Before embarking on a collaboration or social media project, this research should be any company’s first investment.

Heidi Strom Moon
Director of Marketing, CDG Interactive

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Finally, a review of Collaboration and Social Software that takes a critical look at these tools. I found it
essential to understanding the promise of these solutions — as well as some important tool and vendor weaknesses.

Alexander Deligtisch
Founder, Spliteye Multimedia

“ ”
This is an extremely deep dive into the actual inventory of social and collaboration
software products and platforms, with descriptions, ratings, feature matrices and screenshots.

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Blogger on Social Software


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Table of Contents

Table of Contents
Executive Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
A short intro to key concepts and individual vendor strengths and weaknesses

Part 1 – How to Use This Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
A guide to navigating the evaluations

Part 2 – Introduction and Business Case for Social Software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Key concepts

Part 3 – Social Software Dissected . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
How Collaboration and Social Software tools really work

Part 4 – Common Scenarios . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90

Part 5 – Social Software Product Comparisons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
Overview of the Landscape: Growth and Confusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
Examining Basic Specifications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
How We Categorize Vendors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
Matching Features to Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108

Platform Vendors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
Specsheet Summary: Platform Vendors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Capabilities Summary: Platform Vendors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
Business Services Summary: Platform Vendors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Usage Summary: Platform Vendors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
Google: Google Apps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
IBM: Lotus Connections / Quickr . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
Microsoft: SharePoint 2007 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
Oracle: Beehive 1.5 / WebCenter 10g . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190

Social Software Suites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
Specsheet Summary: Social Software Suites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
Capabilities Summary: Social Software Suites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
Business Services Summary: Social Software Suites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216
Usage Summary: Social Software Suites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
Awareness Inc.: Awareness Summer 08 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
bluekiwi: bluekiwi 2009 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
Connectbeam: Spotlight 3.1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
Drupal: Drupal 6.10 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
Jive Software: SBS 4.5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285

© Copyright 2010 The Real Story Group. All Rights Reserved. Enterprise Collaboration and Social Software • i

Table of Contents

Telligent Systems: Community Server / CS Evolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312
Traction Software: TeamPage 4.1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325

Wiki Software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 349
Specsheet Summary: Wikis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350
Capabilities Summary: Wikis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 354
Business Services Summary: Wikis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355
Usage Summary: Wikis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 356
Atlassian: Confluence 3.0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357
MediaWiki: MediaWiki 1.15 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369
MindTouch: MindTouch 2009 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379
Socialtext: Socialtext 3.6.4.5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 388
Wetpaint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400

Blog Software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 408
Specsheet Summary: Blogs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 410
Capabilities Summary: Blogs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 412
Business Services Summary: Blogs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413
Usage Summary: Blogs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 414
WordPress: WordPress 3.0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415
Google: Blogger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 433
SAY Media: Movable Type 4.34 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 446

White-label Community Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 464
Specsheet Summary: White Label . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 467
Capabilities Summary: White Label . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 471
Business Services Summary: White Label . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472
Usage Summary: White Label . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 473
KickApps: KickApps Platform 4.0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 474
Lithium: Lithium Social CRM Suite . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 484
Ning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 504
DemandMedia: Pluck SiteLife 3.3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 517

Public Networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 537
Specsheet Summary: Networking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 539
Capabilities Summary: Networking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 542
Business Services Summary: Networking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 543
Usage Summary: Networking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 544
Facebook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 545
LinkedIn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 557
Twitter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 567

© Copyright 2010 The Real Story Group. All Rights Reserved. Enterprise Collaboration and Social Software • ii

Table of Contents

XING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 577

Chapter 6 – Key Advice to Enterprise Social Software Customers . . . . . . . . . . . 588

Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 598

Vendor Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 611

© Copyright 2010 The Real Story Group. All Rights Reserved. Enterprise Collaboration and Social Software • iii

Part 5 – Social Software Product Comparisons


NOTE: This is an excerpt from the 23-page review in the full research

Matching Features to Requirements
To help you compare and evaluate products based on your requirements, we will use the
following charts from the feature set and scenario discussions in the previous sections. For
comparisons across related products, consult the category introductions, below.

Functional Business Services
Social Software technology can be broken Business Services
down into a set of at least eleven functional Blog
services. Of course, not all tools offer all Wiki
services, and some “pure-play” products — Project Tracking & Participation
such as standalone blog and wiki tools — offer Multimedia
Info Ranking & Filtering
only one or two services, but do them
File Sharing
comparatively well.
Microblogging
You’ll want to match up tool capabilities with Discussion
your particular needs in this area. Presence / IM
People Finding

Technology Services Overview
Technology Services overall can be broken down into two broad categories:
• Application Services, which are
business-user facing and are fairly
Capabilities
universal. They deal with common,
user-facing services across all the tools
we cover in this report, though certainly Application Services
not every product can or should Spam/Naughty Filtering
Author, Editing, Commenting
incorporate all these services.
Personalization
Repository Services
Workflow & Process Mgmt
Handheld Delivery
Feed Ingest & Production
Vocabularies & Tagging
Search

© Copyright 2010 The Real Story Group. All Rights Reserved. Enterprise Collaboration and Social Software • 1


• Administrative & System Services,
which are developer- or administrator-
Capabilities
facing. These services deal with the
underlying plumbing (e.g., access
control), as well as the overlying layers of Admin & System Services
the tools (e.g., usability and Security & Access Control
Scaling, Clustering, Failover
internationalization). There is a tendency
Backup & Restoration
to overlook these services in the rush to
Multi-instance Management
implement software, but they are critical Reporting & Analytics
to long-term success. Configuration Management
Lifecycle Management
Vendor Intangibles Integration & Extension
UI Customization
UI Internationalization
The “fit” of a particular vendor to your
enterprise needs, culture, and orientation is
Capabilities
usually more critical to your overall success
than the suitability of its offering.
Vendor Intangibles
“Vendor intangibles” are those other factors to Maintenance & Support
consider when looking at a solution. In the Services & Channel
individual product sections, we evaluate each Integration & Partnerships
offering according to five critical “vendor Strategy & Roadmap
intangibles.” Viability & Stability

Universal Scenarios
Explicitly or not, different Social Software Scenario Fits
products target different use cases.
Understanding the business scenarios that fit
External
better or worse for the different packages
Branded Communities
enables you to see deeper into their relative Reader Interaction
strengths and weaknesses for your particular Partner Collaboration
circumstances. Therefore, we have identified Professional Networking
eleven common scenarios against which
vendors can be judged. Each scenario Internal
emphasizes to varying degrees the features we Project Collaboration
elaborated in the previous section. Enterprise Collaboration
Enterprise Discussion
We break the eleven scenarios down into two
Info Organization & Filtering
broad categories: External and Internal. Knowledgebase Management
• External scenarios involve social Communities of Practice
networking and collaboration with Enterprise Networking
people primarily outside your firewall.
• Internal scenarios focus on activity that takes place primarily behind your enterprise
firewall. We say “primarily” because in practice enterprise networks can get fungible,
especially where collaboration is involved.
Key to Vendor Charts



Key

+ Product excels at this feature, relative to other products in the same category

Product offers this feature

− Product provides this feature, but is not as mature as its rivals

– Product does not provide this feature in any meaningful way

P Feature offered through a Partnership with another supplier


Capabilities Summary: Social Software Suites

Telligent Systems: Community Server

Traction Software: TeamPage 4.1
Connectbeam: Spotlight 3.1
Awareness Inc: Awareness

Jive Software: SBS 4.0
Capabilities

Drupal: Drupal 6.10
blueKiwi

Application Services
Spam/Naughty Filtering
h
arc
Personalization
e
Repository Services
l res
ful
Workflow & Process Mgmt
Handheld Delivery
n
Feed Ingest & Production
le i
ab
ail

Av
Search

Admin & System Services
Security & Access Control
Scaling, Clustering, Failover
h
arc
−
Backup & Restoration
e
Multi-instance Management
l res
ful
Reporting & Analytics
Configuration Management
n
ble i
Integration & Extension
a ila
Av
UI Customization
UI Internationalization

Vendor Intangibles
Maintenance & Support +
Services & Channel
Integration & Partnerships
Strategy & Roadmap
Viability & Stability


Business Services Summary: Social Software Suites



Business Services

Drupal: Drupal 6.10
blueKiwi

Blog −
Wiki −
Project Tracking & Participation −
h
Multimedia −
e arc
Info Ranking & Filtering
res
full
File Sharing
Microblogging
le in
ilab
Discussion

Ava
Presence / IM
Profiling / People Finding

Key

+ Product excels at this feature, relative to other products in the same category

Product offers this feature

− Product provides this feature, but is not as mature as its rivals

– Product does not provide this feature in any meaningful way



Usage Summary: Social Software Suites



Scenario Fits

Drupal: Drupal 6.10
blueKiwi
External
Branded Customer Communities −
Customer/Reader Interaction −
Partner Collaboration
h
arc
Professional Networking

e
Internal
l res
Project Collaboration
n ful
le i
Enterprise Collaboration
Enterprise Discussion
b
Info Organization & Filtering
a ila
Knowledgebase Management
Communities of Practice Av
Enterprise Networking

Key

Product could fit this scenario or industry

+ Product designed to fit this scenario or industry, but you should test

− Product might fit this scenario or industry, but may require more customization

− Product very unlikely to fit this scenario or industry in any meaningful way




Jive Software: SBS 4.5 www.jivesoftware.com

Product at a Glance
Specsheet Jive Software: Social Business Software 4.5 Summary

Geography Primarily North America and Europe
What's New • New caching mechanism using Voldemort
• Enterprise IM connectors for Microsoft Lync and IBM Sametime
• Support for OpenSocial widgets with “Widget Studio” to add &
customize
Strengths • Unusually broad set of services in one package
• Offers separate internal and external products off the same codebase
• Strong Profile and Forum services support Networking and Discussion
scenarios, and can scale across the enterprise for both
• Six more in full Research
Weaknesses • Poor formalization and output options for discussion threads and wikis
makes the product less suited for Knowledgebase Management
• Plethora of native services can be confusing and requires training
• Surprisingly thin Administrative and System Services puts more burden
on manual administration for backup, deletions, etc.
• Mobile services tied natively to iPhone only
• Dependence on third-party (OEM’d) modules sometimes backfires
• You must install separate instances for each language pack
• Three more in full Research
Potential Fit See full Research
Unlikely Fit See full Research
Compare To Lithium, Drupal, Traction, IBM Connections, Awareness
OS & Repository Wide support matrix for both operating systems and databases
App Platform Installed: most standard Java application servers; or SaaS
Client Browser: IE, Firefox, Safari, Chrome
Licensing Subscription: US$59/user/year, with 25 user minimum. Optional modules
cost extra. External communities priced on traffic
Ownership / Size Privately held, VC funded/ 160 employees

NOTE: This is an excerpt from the 27-page review in the full research



Summary
Coming from a long-time forum software vendor, Jive Social Business Software (“SBS”) is
more oriented toward discussion than project-oriented interaction. “The Social Business
allows and rewards open conversation between colleagues, partners, and customers,” explains
a Jive white paper. In short, this is a very different product than, say, SharePoint.
The vendor keeps adding more functionality — often OEM’d modules at a break-neck pace.
And sometimes, Jive swaps them out just as quickly. The company itself is evolving at an
equally brisk pace; with millions in VC funding, and an IPO projected for the near future, it’s
continuously on the move.
The product aims to combine a single user experience for wikis, forums, blogs, and profiles —
and it largely succeeds. SBS is feature rich, and there’s a lot here that the typical
implementation may never exploit. Like the other vendors at this tier...

Continues in full research...

Introduction
Jive Software was founded in April 2001 by Bill Lynch and Matt Tucker, primarily as a chat
and forum software vendor, and still develops those products separately today (Jive Forums
and Openfire — which has recently been open sourced).
With the Web 2.0 boomlet, Jive quickly morphed into developing a broader suite called
“Clearspace” off its forum module, initially released in early 2007. With broad functionality, a
slick AJAX-y interface, and the potential for programmatic extension, Clearspace quickly
picked up many Fortune 500 customers.
With version 3.0, Jive changed the name from Clearspace to “Social Business Software,” or
just “SBS.” In doing so, the company tried to get out in front of what it hopes will become a
new standard three-letter acronym, one that might appeal more to senior enterprise decision-
makers than monikers like “Web 2.0,” “Social Software,” or even dowdy old “Collaboration.”
You can read too much into a product name change, but it also seems to reflect a new
seriousness within a company that previously projected a more new-age culture.
Jive has major customers such as Nike and a slew of technology companies like Toshiba,
Philips, VMWare, Intel, Cisco, EMC, and Toshiba. The vendor currently exudes a VC-fuelled
confidence set on becoming the Facebook of the enterprise. Raising $7m with Sequoia in
2007, it received an additional $30m in funding in 2010. Tony Zingale has been serving as
interim CEO since 2008, and under his lead, Jive opened a Silicon Valley HQ (in Palo Alto), in
addition to the existing Portland, Boulder, UK, and Germany offices. In short, everything’s
prepared for an IPO in the near future.
Probably because of this, the company continues a hectic release schedule. The “Foundation”
is the base platform. Current version 4.5 came out in June 2010; version 4.0 was released in
October 2009 (only seven months after the previous major release of 3.0 in March 2009), and
2.5 was released in August 2008. Version 5.0 is promised for the beginning of 2011. As you
might imagine, many large enterprises can’t (or don’t want to) keep up with major releases at



the same pace. For this reason, even the version 2 of Clearspace was still updated as recently
as July 2010 with version 2.5.28.
Jive maintains that rather than sticking major version numbers on minor releases for marketing
purposes, it actually considers them to be comprehensive releases. With a slew of
improvements, additional modules, and connectors in each, this is probably true. In current
version 4.5, the UI will still be very familiar to previous users. Most of the changes are fairly
minor fixes and additions — but there are a lot of them.
However, Jive’s major releases also tend to change major components in the “Foundation,”
such as the search functionality in 4.5, which will require a full new indexing. Jive has also
been aggressively OEM’ing third-party technologies, which surface in SBS as “modules.”
These sometimes get swapped in and out within the year, which means that major components
you may rely on could be outdated as soon as version 5 comes out at the beginning of 2011.

Figure 1. The default view in SBS shows a set of “spaces,” as well as recently added content:
blog entries, forum comments, and documents (wikis and files).

Currently, the SBS “Foundation” can be supplemented with optional modules such as:
• Analytics, to report on traffic and activity (integrated with the BusinessObjects BI
OnDemand solution)
• “Bridging,” which allows you to take external comment, discuss it internally, and
follow up on the external community
• “Office Connector,” which allows you to preview and annotate Office documents from
within Jive, and synchronize the annotations back to the Office documents
• Mobile, which allows iPhone users to use the Jive SBS Mobile app from Apple’s
iPhone App Store



• SharePoint Connector, which exposes some SharePoint content in Jive, as well as
adding Jive Web Parts to SharePoint
• Video, for transcoding and serving videos as Flash
• “Market Engagement,” which enables you to monitor social media for sentiments
• “Enterprise IM,” which enables you to integrate Microsoft OCS or IBM Sametime
instant messaging (new for 4.5)
“Market Engagement” is a solution OEM’d from Radian6. In addition to this, the vendor also
still offers “Insight,” renamed to “Discovery.” Jive OEM’d this from Networked Insights, a
partnership that was announced with the release of SBS 3.0. The advantage with the Radian6
solution is that it’s possible to also use widgets with analysis results within Jive (where you
can discuss the metrics). However, according to Jive, the Networked Insights module offers
deeper analysis (and might be better suited for high-traffic, public communities). Jive makes a
big thing out of having licensed “the full Twitter firehose,” i.e., the vendor has complete, real-
time access to all tweets. However, it’s unclear how the vendor plans to make use of this. We
can only assume it will be fed into Market Engagement.
The “Office Connector” was introduced in 4.0 and OEMs DocVerse technology. The
conversion of Office documents for preview in SBS is done through Open Office (as is
customary on non-Microsoft platforms). The drawback to this is that not all documents will
successfully convert. Most see a 95 percent success rate, though your mileage may vary. More
importantly, shortly after the connector was introduced, Google suddenly acquired DocVerse,
for use in its direct competitor, Google Apps. For now, the Office Connector is still available
in 4.5, but Jive may be forced to look for an alternate solution in the near future. The vendor
keeps somewhat quiet on the topic, but seems determined to either keep using DocVerse or
find another alternative.
Jive has open sourced its own Openfire chat/IM server, which now seems to be in the hands of
a thriving community. If you don’t have an alternate solution there, you likely will want to
install it, as well. It can be integrated with Jive using “Jive Connects.” SBS 4.5 also has Jive
Connects for Microsoft OCS and IBM Sametime. Note that these require an extra license for
“Enterprise IM.”
As you can tell from this short history, don’t take Jive’s add-ons to the “Foundation” for
granted. They have plenty of moving parts, and often have had little time to prove themselves
in real-life scenarios. For example, some functionality requires a designated server, such as the
Office previews. Others will be little more than the plugin to tie functionality into the
Foundation. Version 4.5 introduces OpenSocial widgets, which are more superficial elements,
and can be added by any user. The technical impact of certain marketed feature sets can be
hard to gauge. This is not a system that’s easily upgraded with every new tempting feature; the
fact that even Clearspace 2.5 is still in active duty speaks volumes.
It doesn’t particularly help that the company’s marketing is a step ahead of the actual releases.
Jive has announced major additions for version 5. Apart from “Jive What Matters,” which
combines various activity streams into a coherent page. Version 5 will also inaugurate the
“Jive App Market,” adding even more layers to the mix of modules, plugins, and widgets.
Listening to Jive, you’d think these would already be in the current 4.5 release. Instead,
they’re promises for 5.0, which is slated in the first half of 2011.



With SBS, it’s important to forget what was previously offered and announced, and to filter
out what’s not yet available. Evaluate the current release available for download. You could
(and probably will) run this “as-is” for the next few years. Jive has a tendency to get ahead of
itself, but fortunately doesn’t forget those that are left behind.

Business Services
Business Services
Collaboration & Discussion: Team Spaces
Blog
A “space” is the central organizing principal Wiki −
here. You can set them up by topic, department, Project Tracking & Participation

See Full research
and enterprise wide — or according to any other Multimedia
dimension. Unlike many other tools, spaces can Info Ranking & Filtering
nest other child “sub-spaces” that inherit File Sharing
permissions and other attributes. A space Microblogging
“owner” configures them, and actually has a fair Discussion
bit of flexibility in how to set them up, primarily Presence / IM
Profiling / People Finding
by adding or removing “widgets.” SBS comes
with several widgets out of the box (such as
polls, RSS feeds, and others), and you can build your own as well. Version 4.5 adds support for
OpenSocial widgets, and offers a “Widget Studio” to configure these. The space owner drags
them onto a page and configures them individually.

Figure 2. A space owner can add widgets to a space from a pre-set collection, as well as any
widgets your enterprise develops itself.
Unlike many forum and collaboration modules...




Application Services
Capabilities
Personalization & Customization
SBS offers a personalized tab called “Your Application Services
Spam/Naughty Filtering
View,” where you can organize and track tags,
spaces, and people that are important to you
Personalization
(Figure 142). The people you follow become a

See Full Research
Repository Services
bit like “friends” in Facebook; you can mouse Workflow & Process Mgmt
over their names to see what they’ve been Handheld Delivery
doing recently. Feed Ingest & Production
Repository Services Search
What SBS lacks in Lifecycle Management (see
below) it makes up for — to some extent — in basic Repository Services. SBS has useful
versioning and rollback services, including side-by-side compare (useful for wiki changes in
particular). The product also has version control, which locks down items when you click
“Edit.”


Architecture
The core architecture has changed little since 2007. SBS is a Struts-based Java application that
runs off servlets and Java objects (but thankfully, no complicated EJBs). You need to run an
application server with JDK 1.6 or higher, and a relational database. The company
recommends a combination of Linux, Sun JDK, Tomcat, and Postgres, but many other
combinations are “certified,” while others are simply “supported.”
SBS employs several other open source packages, including...




Administrative & System Services
Capabilities
Administrative
With respect to Security and Access Control, Admin & System Services
SBS will connect to your LDAP or Active Security & Access Control
Directory repository for basic authentication. Scaling, Clustering, Failover −
Permissions get checked at the space level. This Backup & Restoration

See Full research
is convenient for scenarios where content is Multi-instance Management
more dynamic than the different groups in the Reporting & Analytics
system. It does mean, though, that as you create Configuration Management
new groups, you need to go through each space
Integration & Extension
and set permissions accordingly.
UI Customization
Administrators have fine-grained control over UI Internationalization
these settings, but you’ll probably want to avoid
the temptation to get too cute here, or you may
have a lot of help-desk inquiries.
Like several tools at the tier above, RSS feeds and search results get permissions-trimmed —
again by space rather than document. This is essential for enterprises with sensitive
information that can keep it within a locked down space, but will add some processing
overhead on feed generation.
It is important to note that attached files do not have separate permissions from the discussion
or wiki item to which they are appended. There is no document-level security like you would
find in, say, SharePoint. (Again: Jive goes to great pains to explain that this is not a document
management system.)



Figure 3. You set permissions on a space-by-space basis.


Vendor Intangibles
In July 2010, the company announced it had Capabilities
secured $30m in series C funding from Sequoia
Capital and Kleiner Perkins. As interim CEO Vendor Intangibles
Tony Zingale boasted, the last time those two Maintenance & Support +
invested together “it was a company named Services & Channel
Google.” The company says it achieved an 88 Integration & Partnerships
research

Strategy & Roadmap
See full

percent growth in revenue in 2009 (for a total of
Viability & Stability
some $100m). All signs are indicating that Jive
is making a run for an IPO in the near future; in
fact, the vendor is very open about all of these
ambitions.
As a company, Jive seems to be liked by its customers, several of whom are the kind of large,
Fortune 100 firms that tend to avoid smaller vendors. In fact, Jive seems to target larger
enterprises — or at least those customers with the Java chops to truly understand and
customize what is not a simple platform.
Some of those larger customers are pushing for more of the enterprisey, back-end functionality
that you’ve seen by now is rather absent in this product, while others are pushing for



integration with enterprise systems that could offer those services (e.g., ECM products). Jive
seems intent on adding more connectors, but for now, most of these are relatively superficial
— perhaps because the vendor is still too small to develop on its own. As a result, Jive has...


Conclusion Scenario Fits
Fundamentally, SBS tries to enable dialogue
and communities around topics and information External
that might be more amorphous and fluid than Branded Communities
what you might initially presume when creating Reader Interaction −
a more explicitly project- or department- External Collaboration −
oriented SharePoint team site. Professional Networking −
But having succeeded in maturing a Internal
conversation to a point where the enterprise Project Collaboration

See full research
will take action, then what? At that point, you Enterprise Collaboration
need to accept Jive’s functionally weak project Enterprise Discussion
collaboration services — or ... Info Organization & Filtering
Knowledgebase Management
Communities of Practice
Enterprise Networking



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