If you run an intranet, or a customer or partner community, you may have been following the recent M&A activity in the social software space involving Jive Software.
In June, Jive – which offers Jive-n for internal intranets and Jive-X for use in external customer and partner communities — was sold to a private Texas investment firm, Aurea, for $462 million.
Two months later, Aurea announced it flipped Jive-X to Lithium Technologies, a San Francisco-based provider of online community and social media management software. The deal, which completed last week, came three years after Lithium paid $200 million to buy the social media ranking platform Klout, an acquisition designed to extend Lithium’s core business of helping companies with their digital customer experience and support functions.
While these deals point to a growing awareness of the size and strength of the enterprise social software market — expected to nearly double to $49.5 billion in 2021, according to Markets and Markets — the Jive-X acquisition by Lithium, one of its main competitors, could have huge implications for those Jive-X and Lithium customers who are wondering what will happen next.
Earlier this month, Jive shared a FAQ detailing what Jive-X customers can expect. Meanwhile, Lithium opened a discussion group in its online community to answer questions and discuss the changes. Both sides say there are no plans to retire the Jive-X platform. In fact, there are “integration teams” on the Lithium side working to integrate Jive customers, support, etc. into Lithium’s organization, and there is a “transition services agreement” with Jive by which Jive will continue to help us support those customers. In 2018, Lithium will own the road map and code for the Jive-x product.
While Lithium will not continue to sell Jive-X, it will treat the platform as one of its valued products. There is no “end of life” plan for Jive-X, and Lithium’s leaders are currently speaking with select Jive-X customers to better understand their needs before committing to any next steps. However, the eventual plan is to merge the best of both products.
On the services side, Jive will continue to offer professional services until the end of the year, and Jive-X partners will likely continue to offer professional services to Jive-X customers long after Jive pulls the plug on its professional services offerings. Meanwhile, Lithium has an eye toward growing its partner roster and will include Jive-X partners.
