Online customer communities can be dynamic environments for solving problems, strengthening relationships, extending brand reach, fostering innovation, and more. While a community is much more than the technology that supports it, it’s tough to build a lasting, vibrant community without the right tools. As customers’(and your own!) demands for features and capabilities increase, the importance of having a good platform—and the expertise of the company behind it—only increases as well.

Jive Software, founded in 2001, has made a name for itself with its Enterprise Forums. Its newest offerings, Clearspace and Clearspace X, were developed with collaboration in mind. Clearspace (no “X”) enables internal collaboration within organizations; Clearspace X, which is built to support collaboration with and among external groups (such as partners, developers, and customers), is the subject of this report.

With a variety of integrated components—blogs, discussions, document sharing, and private messaging, to name a few—Clearspace X is a relatively new platform, launched only in May of this year and now on Version 1.4.0. Early versions of software products typically take time to get the kinks out, so as Clearspace X’s adoption grows and customer feedback helps prioritize Jive’s feature list, we expect even smoother operation and more integration (e.g., of real-time services such as presence awareness).

While Jive does host communities for a few large clients, it is primarily sold as licensed, on-premises software. As such, Clearspace X is geared toward enterprises with the resources, expertise, and inclination to host and manage the system in-house. It may not be the choice for organizations that are looking for a one-stop community solution (platform and hosting).

Hosting aside, we recommend Clearspace X for communities for which collaboration and document sharing are important, if not essential. It is best suited for communities that are grounded in trust and shared learning, such as professional-peer communities (a.k.a. communities of practice) and developer communities.

To build a successful online community—whether your members are looking primarily for answers to questions, for fellowship, for opportunities to interact with your brand, or for fun—it is crucial to match your business goals to the platform you use.

While your long-term goals should be large, your community will likely start out small. (In fact, it’s almost impossible not to start out small.) In this regard, the technology platform you use should comfortably support the needs of your nascent community. But the platform should also be able to grow with your community in terms of both functionality and technological infrastructure.

This report applies our online community evaluation criteria[1] to the Clearspace X platform from Jive Software. Keep in mind that we have developed our criteria to evaluate platforms for enabling any type of community, whether the focus is on service and support, developer collaboration, social or professional networking, and so on (or, what is typically the case, some combination of the above). Solutions that we analyze have often been optimized for just one or two of these specific uses. Clearspace X has been built primarily for communities in which collaboration is a key aspect. These communities tend to be ones in which members work together on projects and tasks, and/or in which the sharing of files, for example, is essential.

Clearspace X, developed with collaboration in mind, consists of the following primary integrated components:

•Discussions
•Blogs
•Wiki-style Documents (and workflow)
•Tags
•Member Profiles

Illustration 1 shows the home page of Jive Software’s own recently launched Jivespace Developer Community.

Jivespace Developer Community Uses Clearspace X

© 2007 Jive Software
Illustration 1. The three main areas of the Clearspace X home page are the navigational listing of Communities (and sub-communities), the top-member list, and the "What's New" section that displays both static information (announcements) and dynamic content from within the community. All community discussions, documents, and blog posts can also be accessed from this page. Through the use of themes, administrators can change not only the layout, but also the individual components themselves.

OVERVIEW OF JIVE SOFTWARE

Founded in 2001 by Dave Hersh (CEO), Matt Tucker (CTO), and Bill Lynch (VP Technology), Jive Software entered the market with Java-based, open-source discussion forums.

Jive’s products include its Enterprise Forums, its Openfire (formerly Wildfire) real-time collaboration application, and the Clearspace and Clearspace X collaboration and community platforms.

In February 2007, Jive launched its Clearspace product. Clearspace is geared toward internal use within an organization. Clearspace X, the version of the platform designed for external groups (partners, customers, etc.), was launched soon after in May 2007.

Jive claims to have over 1,600 customers across its product lines. Its customers span multiple industries, such as high-tech, media, financial services, retail, professional services, healthcare, and education. Table A shows a selection of these customers, which include Citibank, IBM, VMware, Warner Brothers, Amazon.com, and Verizon.

In addition to licensing its software products, Jive also helps its customers with data migration and implementation, managed hosting, and custom feature development. It also offers business analysis, training, and community strategy consulting.

Select Jive Software Customers
(Please download the formatted PDF for the table at http://www.psgroup.com/detail.aspx?ID=843.)
Table A. Jive Software’s customers span a wide range of industries.

This report continues…

To read the full report: http://www.psgroup.com/detail.aspx?ID=843.