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Jive acquires OffiSync; announces Jive 5
Wednesday, May 25, 2011 by Angela Ashenden
Yesterday, Palo Alto, CA-based online communities vendor Jive Software announced its acquisition of OffiSync, a vendor of Microsoft Office extension plug-ins, for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition comes hot on the heels of another acquisition by Jive of Proximal Labs in April, and the company also made a third acquisition in January last year, of social media monitoring compay Filtrbox.
This latest acquisition brings Jive not only technology to deliver tight integration between its communities platform and Microsoft Office, Outlook and SharePoint, but also of course the team of 12 people responsible for developing the product – a strategy that was also behind the Proximal Labs purchase last month. The company is clearly ramping up its team and portfolio in advance of an IPO which is widely expected for later this year, and is being extremely focused (and enthusiastic) in its spending of its recent funding. In Europe, Jive recently hired a new Vice President of EMEA, and is currently in the midst of a customer event tour which is visiting London and Paris this week, and Frankfurt next month. And with the launch yesterday of the next version of the platform, Jive 5, which will become generally available on June 30th, the company will have no problem maintaining market visibility over the coming months.
While its easy to see why this acquisition was appealing to Jive, given the company’s focus around developing integration points with external applications (particularly with Microsoft products), existing OffiSync users will be interested to see what happens to the product in the longer term, since it is currently focused on providing integration between Microsoft and Google Apps. The existing Google Apps-based plug-in is likely to remain available for now, but going forward I would expect Google to develop its own version while Jive absorbs OffiSync completely.
To find out more about Jive 5 and its position in the online communities market, look out for a new MWD profile report which we will be publishing soon. For more analysis of collaboration news, trends and best practices, click here to download free Guest Pass reports, and click here for more on our premium collaboration advisory service.
Posted in General