Jive Software, one of the more successful startups offering collaborative software to large corporations, says it has a big goal for the latest version of its product — to bring its Clearspace software “everywhere.” That doesn’t just mean wooing more customers, but allowing existing customers to use Clearspace in many more contexts, as well.
Jive has added three new features to Clearspace — which provides tools like blogs, wikis and forums to allow users to collaborate within a company, and to interact with their customers — with that specific goal in mind. None of the features are all that innovative on their own, but collectively they mark a smart move forward. For one thing, users can now participate in discussions, check updates and more via text message or email, so Clearspace becomes more accessible and useful outside the office. In addition, Clearspace now integrates with customer relationship manage (CRM) service Salesforce.com, so a Salesforce customer account page can show relevant activity and information from within Clearspace. Finally, it’s now much easier to enable Clearspace-managed customer comments on any webpage by just adding a few lines of code. (See demo video below.)
Clearspace Community 2.5 from Jive Software on Vimeo.
These additions should allow the Sequoia-backed Jive to continue building momentum. As reported earlier this year, Jive reached more than 2,000 customers last year and made more than $15 million in sales — not exactly numbers to terrify executives behind Microsoft’s established collaboration tool Sharepoint, but still impressive growth. Clearspace manages the customer communities and/or the office collaboration of some high-profile customers, including Nike and farm equipment manufacturer John Deere.
Other new features include customizable groups, people search and an improved text editor.
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