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Jive deepens integration with Cisco's WebEx and Jabber

Jive deepens integration with Cisco's WebEx and Jabber

The two vendors struck a partnership in May to bundle the Cisco products with Jive's enterprise social suite

Jive Software has pushed out updates for the cloud versions of both its enterprise social networking (ESN) suite and its JiveX software for building external online communities.

The main enhancement for the Jive ESN suite is what the company is touting as native integration with Cisco's WebEx and Jabber, following a partnership the vendors announced in May.

Back then, Cisco said it was axing its WebEx Social ESN suite, formerly called Quad, and that it would resell the Jive suite instead.

The bundle includes WebEx Meetings and Jabber for online meetings, Web conferencing, IM and audio/video communications, and Jive's ESN software. ESN lets employees build individual profiles with activity streams and do things like post status updates, blog, share and comment on documents, set up group workspaces and participate in discussion forums. The Jive-Cisco bundle was already live with some customers, like Thomson Reuters, but the vendors said they would better integrate their products.

On Tuesday, Jive announced the Jive Connector for WebEx and the Jive Connector for Jabber, which let customers launch WebEx meetings from a colleague's Jive profile or from any shared document with a group. Users can also launch a chat session or phone call from Jive pages via compatible Jabber clients.

Other improvements in the Jive ESN Suite include more flexibility for employees to customize their home page via new options for grouping, categorizing and sharing information. Users can create their personalized dashboard via a drag-and-drop interface.

Jive also released an iPhone version of its Present app, which is designed for sales pros to access content like presentations and brochures from Jive while on the road. The Present app, available also for Android tablets and iPads, has also gained integration with Salesforce.com's cloud CRM suite and with third-party calendar applications.

Meanwhile, the company said it improved JiveX's rendering on mobile browsers through responsive design, so that the layout and navigation of these external community sites adapt on the fly to devices' screen sizes. Jive also enhanced the suite's CRM Connector with pre-built templates for support portals, and deeper links for third-party CRM systems, including the ability for users to search content in Jive communities from within the CRM systems' interfaces.

JiveX also features more granular usage analytics and reports, so that community managers can better monitor interactions with customers, detect trends and respond to feedback.

The new releases of Jive and JiveX come at a time when the company finds itself as one of the last independent enterprise social collaboration vendors that remain viable players in this market, where rivals include IBM with Connections, Salesforce.com with Chatter and Communities, Microsoft with Yammer and SharePoint and Tibco with Tibbr.

Jive, founded in 2001, went public in late 2011, pricing its shares at US$12. They topped $27 in early April 2012, before going on a decline that continues to this day. The stock closed at $6.76 on Monday on the Nasdaq.

In its second quarter, ended June 30, Jive's revenue grew 23 percent to $43.4 million year-on-year. Its net loss was $14.6 million, about $3.2 million narrower than the net loss in last year's second quarter.

In June, Forrester Research ranked Jive as a "leader" among enterprise social software vendors, along with IBM, Salesforce, Microsoft, Zimbra and Tibco. "Jive is the last of what was once a rich landscape of pure-play enterprise social vendors. As others have been acquired or faded into the background of a crowded vendor landscape, Jive continues to thrive by emphasizing user experience across all devices," wrote Forrester analyst Rob Koplowitz at the time.

Jive's customers include T-Mobile, GE Healthcare, Eli Lilly, Prudential, Humana, Genentech, National Instruments, Vodafone and Nike.

Juan Carlos Perez covers enterprise communication/collaboration suites, operating systems, browsers and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Juan on Twitter at @JuanCPerezIDG.

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Tags softwareapplicationsJive Software

More about Forrester ResearchGEGE HealthcareHumanaIDGJive SoftwareMicrosoftNational InstrumentsNewsNikePrudentialSalesforce.comThomsonThomson ReutersTibcoT-MobileVodafoneZimbra

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