When we work with clients, there is often some natural discussion around why we would recommend Jive SBS, rather than Microsoft Sharepoint, Atlassian Confluence, or an open source alternative. Sharepoint and Confluence both have their place, and there are definitely some great open source solutions out there – but we believe Jive SBS is the best social business acceleration platform available.
Using Jive will allow you to get started immediately, with a minimum of effort, and with a clear focus on increasing and leveraging social capital. Although it may require a relatively high initial investment, Jive will give you the highest return on attention, in a world where attention is increasing in relative scarcity.
Many alternatives, such as SharePoint, are very document centric and difficult to use. An investment in Sharepoint usually leads to a further investment in a product such as Jive once you find the adoption isn’t as expected. Other tools, such as Confluence, are great wiki tools, but that is all they are. The organisation will once again create one more information silo, and increase complexity rather than decrease it. Even though we are big supporters of open source, the open source alternative to Jive just don’t compare. Depending on the tool, usability isn’t great and it usually takes several to get the same complete set of features that Jive provides.
In addition to having the best out-of-box experience and feature-set, Jive also leads the way in terms of integration and extensibility. There are existing modules covering everything from SharePoint integration to Ideation, and you can also use OpenSocial widgets inside Jive SBS. The architecture and availability of the codebase and documentation ensures that you are also able to develop your own extensions.
Not content with leading the pack today (as per analysts such as Forrestor and Gartner), Jive has also positioned itself for tomorrow, outlining its roadmap for SBS 5.0 and beyond, with exciting new features such as the “What Matters” page and Jive Apps.
The What Matters page is a tailorable environment that integrates essential content from Jive SBS (like your connections, groups, projects, communities, blogs, wikis, and status updates) with what matters most from your email, documents, existing enterprise tools, business applications, and the social web.
Jive Apps are lightweight, powerful applications that deliver critical functionality without the overhead of outdated legacy user interfaces. The Jive Apps Market will function as a gallery of applications, tailored for various industries, business functions and processes. These apps are being built by cloud application providers, third party developers and system integrators.
If you would like to increase the levels of communication, collaboration, and engagement in your organisation, get in contact with us.
