Every Friday I’m going to attempt to summarize any relevant news in the future of work/collaboration space. I’ll provide the name of the vendor, a short summary of what the announcement or piece of news is with a link to the original, and finally a short POV. I can’t cover every single thing that comes out but I will do my best to provide as much relevant content as I can. If you have something you think I should include then please send it over and I will decide if it’s something I can add. Again, keep in mind this is weekly roundup so the news or announcements need to be from that week. Here is the roundup for this week
Telligent acquires Zimbra from VMware
Zimbra which used to be a part of VMware was acquired by Telligent which will actually re-brand as Zimbra…Telligent will be no more. While Telligent focused on many of the social aspects of collaboration Zimbra has a core feature set around more traditional means of collaboration such as task management, email, shared calendaring, and file sharing. However, Telligent did have some of these features built into its existing platform. This acquisition also means 100 new employees as well as existing Zimbra customers will be carried over to the new company.
My POV
To be honest I haven’t paid too much attention to Zimbra in the past and VMware doesn’t seem to really care that they are getting rid of it; they have their own product focused on social collaboration called Socialcast. Overall it looks like a good move for both companies VMware seems to have peaked with their use and need for Zimbra and Telligent is just getting started with it. The Telligent brand will disappear and everything will become Zimbra which I found to be an interesting choice but not a bad thing. This acquisition doubles the size of employees and increases the number of customers and partners which is always a good thing. This will provide a great opportunity to up-sell and cross-sell Telligent and Zimbra customers which means more revenue. It will be interesting to see how the re-branding and the integration works out.
New Jive summer cloud release
Jive just released the newest version of their product which includes an advanced gamification module powered by Bunchball, improved analytics, and added integrations with Chatter, Yammer, and Evernote through their acquisition of Streamonce.
My POV
When you drill down into the new version of the product a little bit you find that the recent changes are actually quite interesting. For example managers an now create custom missions and rewards based on customized actions and paths that employees take on the platform. This is all designed to help improve employee engagement and productivity. The recent Streamonce integrations also mean that organizations who are using multiple platforms such as Jive, Yammer, and Chatter can now see activity and collaborate across multiple platforms without any additional coding. Most organizations are typically using several platforms at once which are all oftentimes cobbled together with custom integrations and additional coding. This new integration focused on configuration not coding which is a big deal. Jive is certainly making the right moves to stay on top of the enterprise collaboration market.
Ping Identity raised an additional 44 million in funding
Ping Identity offers single-sign-on and identity management technology to over 1,000 corporate clients. The company is getting ready to IPO in 2014 and will be using the recent round of funding to focus on international expansion.
My POV
As organizations shift their IT infrastructure to the cloud, allow for flexible work environments, and BYOD; identity management is going to be an even more crucial role for organizations. I think there is a massive opportunity for a company such as Ping Identity to become the standard for identity management and single-sign-on. In a few years every large organization is going to need what Ping Identity is offering. I’m sure that in addition to the continued growth of the company we can see some upcoming acquisitions and I’m excited to see what the next two years will hold for them.
See you next week!
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