enterprise collaboration-and-social-software

– REDHAT

PLONE SOCIALTEXT

MEDIAWIKI

TRACTION

ATLASSIAN

NPEAK –

BILITY –

– AWARENESS

– MINDTOUCH

– –

– –

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”“The Collaboration & Social Software Research — the most comprehensive and detailed analysis of this rapidly developing marketplace available. Of particular value are the vendor profiles and the authors’ depth of knowledge and understanding.

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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.

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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.

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About The Real Story Group Foundedin2001(asCMSWatch),TheRealStoryGroupevaluatescontent-orientedtechnologies,pub-lishinghead-to-headcomparativereviewsofleadingsolutions.Weprovidetrulyindependentadvice,andworksolelyonbehalfofthetechnologybuyer,neverforvendors.

© Copyright 2011 The Real Story Group. All Rights Reserved. Enterprise Collaboration and Social Software • iSample Edition, Sample License

Table of Contents

Table of ContentsExecutive 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 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103Overview of the Landscape: Growth and Confusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103Examining Basic Specifications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103How We Categorize Vendors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104Matching Features to Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108

Platform Vendors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111Specsheet Summary: Platform Vendors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113Capabilities Summary: Platform Vendors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116Business Services Summary: Platform Vendors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117Usage Summary: Platform Vendors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118

Google: Google Apps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119IBM: Lotus Connections / Quickr . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133Microsoft: SharePoint 2010 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160Oracle: Beehive 1.5 / WebCenter 10g . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190

Social Software Suites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208Specsheet Summary: Social Software Suites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210Capabilities Summary: Social Software Suites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215Business Services Summary: Social Software Suites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216Usage Summary: Social Software Suites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217

Awareness Inc.: Awareness Summer 08 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218bluekiwi: bluekiwi 2009 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233Connectbeam: Spotlight 3.1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245Drupal: Drupal 6.10 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262Jive Software: SBS 4.5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285

© Copyright 2011 The Real Story Group. All Rights Reserved. Enterprise Collaboration and Social Software • iiSample Edition, Sample License

Table of Contents

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

Wiki Software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 349Specsheet Summary: Wikis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350Capabilities Summary: Wikis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 354Business Services Summary: Wikis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355Usage Summary: Wikis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 356

Atlassian: Confluence 3.0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357MediaWiki: MediaWiki 1.15 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369MindTouch: MindTouch 2009 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379Socialtext: Socialtext 3.6.4.5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 388Wetpaint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400

Blog Software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 408Specsheet Summary: Blogs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 410Capabilities Summary: Blogs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 412Business Services Summary: Blogs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413Usage Summary: Blogs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 414

WordPress: WordPress 3.0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415Google: Blogger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 433SAY Media: Movable Type 4.34 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 446

White-label Community Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 464Specsheet Summary: White Label . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 467Capabilities Summary: White Label . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 471Business Services Summary: White Label . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472Usage Summary: White Label . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 473

KickApps: KickApps Platform 4.0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 474Lithium: Lithium Social CRM Suite . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 484Ning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 504DemandMedia: Pluck SiteLife 3.3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 517

Public Networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 537Specsheet Summary: Networking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 539Capabilities Summary: Networking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 542Business Services Summary: Networking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 543Usage Summary: Networking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 544

Facebook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 545LinkedIn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 557Twitter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 567

© Copyright 2011 The Real Story Group. All Rights Reserved. Enterprise Collaboration and Social Software • iiiSample Edition, Sample License

Table of Contents

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

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

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

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

© Copyright 2011 The Real Story Group. All Rights Reserved. Enterprise Collaboration and Social Software • 1Sample Edition, Sample License

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 ServicesSocial Software technology can be broken down into a set of at least eleven functional services. Of course, not all tools offer all services, and some “pure-play” products — such as standalone blog and wiki tools — offer only one or two services, but do them comparatively well. You’ll want to match up tool capabilities with your particular needs in this area.

Technology Services OverviewTechnology Services overall can be broken down into two broad categories:

• Application Services, which are business-user facing and are fairly universal. They deal with common, user-facing services across all the tools we cover in this report, though certainly not every product can or should incorporate all these services.

Business ServicesBlogWikiProject Tracking & Participation MultimediaInfo Ranking & FilteringFile SharingMicrobloggingDiscussionPresence / IMPeople Finding

Capabilities

Application ServicesSpam/Naughty FilteringAuthor, Editing, CommentingPersonalizationRepository ServicesWorkflow & Process MgmtHandheld DeliveryFeed Ingest & ProductionVocabularies & TaggingSearch



• Administrative & System Services, which are developer- or administrator-facing. These services deal with the underlying plumbing (e.g., access control), as well as the overlying layers of the tools (e.g., usability and internationalization). There is a tendency to overlook these services in the rush to implement software, but they are critical to long-term success.

Vendor Intangibles

The “fit” of a particular vendor to your enterprise needs, culture, and orientation is usually more critical to your overall success than the suitability of its offering. “Vendor intangibles” are those other factors to consider when looking at a solution. In the individual product sections, we evaluate each offering according to five critical “vendor intangibles.”

Universal ScenariosExplicitly or not, different Social Software products target different use cases. Understanding the business scenarios that fit better or worse for the different packages enables you to see deeper into their relative strengths and weaknesses for your particular circumstances. Therefore, we have identified eleven common scenarios against which vendors can be judged. Each scenario emphasizes to varying degrees the features we elaborated in the previous section.We break the eleven scenarios down into two broad categories: External and Internal.

• External scenarios involve social networking and collaboration with 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

Capabilities

Admin & System ServicesSecurity & Access ControlScaling, Clustering, FailoverBackup & RestorationMulti-instance ManagementReporting & AnalyticsConfiguration ManagementLifecycle ManagementIntegration & ExtensionUI CustomizationUI Internationalization

Capabilities

Vendor IntangiblesMaintenance & SupportServices & ChannelIntegration & PartnershipsStrategy & RoadmapViability & Stability

Scenario Fits

External Branded CommunitiesReader InteractionPartner CollaborationProfessional Networking

InternalProject CollaborationEnterprise CollaborationEnterprise DiscussionInfo Organization & FilteringKnowledgebase ManagementCommunities of PracticeEnterprise Networking



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

Capabilities

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Application ServicesSpam/Naughty FilteringAuthor, Editing, CommentingPersonalizationRepository ServicesWorkflow & Process MgmtHandheld DeliveryFeed Ingest & ProductionVocabularies & TaggingSearch

Admin & System ServicesSecurity & Access ControlScaling, Clustering, Failover −Backup & RestorationMulti-instance ManagementReporting & AnalyticsConfiguration ManagementLifecycle ManagementIntegration & ExtensionUI CustomizationUI Internationalization

Vendor IntangiblesMaintenance & Support +Services & ChannelIntegration & PartnershipsStrategy & RoadmapViability & Stability

Available in full research



Business Services Summary: Social Software Suites

Business Services

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Blog −Wiki −Project Tracking & Participation −Multimedia −Info Ranking & FilteringFile SharingMicrobloggingDiscussionPresence / IMProfiling / 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

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External Branded Customer Communities −Customer/Reader Interaction −Partner CollaborationProfessional Networking

InternalProject CollaborationEnterprise CollaborationEnterprise DiscussionInfo Organization & FilteringKnowledgebase ManagementCommunities of PracticeEnterprise 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

Jive Software: SBS 4.5 www.jivesoftware.com

Product at a Glance

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

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

http://www.jivesoftware.com



SummaryComing 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...

IntroductionJive 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.

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

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).



• 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

Collaboration & Discussion: Team SpacesA “space” is the central organizing principal here. You can set them up by topic, department, and enterprise wide — or according to any other dimension. Unlike many other tools, spaces can nest other child “sub-spaces” that inherit permissions and other attributes. A space “owner” configures them, and actually has a fair bit of flexibility in how to set them up, primarily 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.

Unlike many forum and collaboration modules...


Business ServicesBlogWiki −Project Tracking & Participation

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Info Ranking & FilteringFile SharingMicrobloggingDiscussionPresence / IMProfiling / People Finding

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.



Application Services

Personalization & CustomizationSBS offers a personalized tab called “Your View,” where you can organize and track tags, spaces, and people that are important to you (Figure 142). The people you follow become a bit like “friends” in Facebook; you can mouse over their names to see what they’ve been doing recently.

Repository ServicesWhat 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.”


ArchitectureThe 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...


Capabilities

Application ServicesSpam/Naughty FilteringAuthor, Editing, CommentingPersonalization

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Repository ServicesWorkflow & Process MgmtHandheld DeliveryFeed Ingest & ProductionVocabularies & TaggingSearch



Administrative & System Services

AdministrativeWith respect to Security and Access Control, SBS will connect to your LDAP or Active Directory repository for basic authentication. Permissions get checked at the space level. This is convenient for scenarios where content is more dynamic than the different groups in the system. It does mean, though, that as you create new groups, you need to go through each space and set permissions accordingly. Administrators have fine-grained control over 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.)

Capabilities

Admin & System ServicesSecurity & Access ControlScaling, Clustering, Failover −Backup & Restoration

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Reporting & AnalyticsConfiguration ManagementLifecycle ManagementIntegration & ExtensionUI CustomizationUI Internationalization




Vendor IntangiblesIn July 2010, the company announced it had secured $30m in series C funding from Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins. As interim CEO Tony Zingale boasted, the last time those two invested together “it was a company named Google.” The company says it achieved an 88 percent growth in revenue in 2009 (for a total of 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

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

Capabilities

Vendor IntangiblesMaintenance & Support +Services & ChannelIntegration & Partnerships

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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...


ConclusionFundamentally, SBS tries to enable dialogue and communities around topics and information that might be more amorphous and fluid than what you might initially presume when creating a more explicitly project- or department-oriented SharePoint team site. But having succeeded in maturing a conversation to a point where the enterprise will take action, then what? At that point, you need to accept Jive’s functionally weak project collaboration services — or ...


Scenario Fits

External Branded CommunitiesReader Interaction −External Collaboration −Professional Networking −

InternalProject Collaboration

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Enterprise DiscussionInfo Organization & FilteringKnowledgebase ManagementCommunities of PracticeEnterprise Networking


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