Successful organizations typically share one important trait: they listen to customers. In the Web 2.0 era, perhaps the best way to embrace -- and extend -- this concept is through online communities. Jive Software has taken its Clearspace collaboration product (which glues together blogs, wiki, document management, and discussion forums) and endowed it with new features specifically for building these public-facing communities.

The Bottom Line Jive Software Clearspace X 1.1.1 Jive Software, jivesoftware.com Excellent  8.8 criteria score weight Ease-of-use 9 20% Management 9 20% Performance 9 20% Interoperability 9 10% Scalability 8 10% Security 8 10% Value 9 10% Cost: Starts at $4,950 for 1,000 users Platforms: A pure Java application that runs on Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, and Solaris with most J2EE application servers; supports MySQL, Oracle, Postgres, IBM DB2, and Microsoft SQL Server datbases. Bottom Line: This release of Clearspace, the external community version, has notable new features and many improvements. Items such as content rating and reward system provide incentives for users to participate. The solution has all the requisite wiki, document management, and blog functions. For large communities, server clustering supports high-traffic sites, while LDAP and Active Directory integration speeds setup and maintenance. And the open architecture makes deployment on commodity hardware simple. About our Reviews and Scoring Methodology

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The external edition, Clearspace X, is an easily administered J2EE application or hosted service that lets you quickly create communities; in turn, each is structured by understandable topics. For example, a financial institution could have communities for banking, loans, mutual funds, and retirement. Each community would contain specific blogs, wikis, and forms. I found this scheme far better for quickly finding relevant information than having it spread throughout one large site. Clearspace X also has content ratings, a reward system, question and answer, polls, and announcements -- all of which help members stay engaged while hopefully forming a positive opinion of your organization.

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Usability is especially paramount with public applications and Clearspace X nails this part. The main interface, which is easy to custom brand by adjusting style sheets, clearly lists each community. Once inside a community, members use tabs to quickly reach discussions, documents, and blogs.

Prominently placed action lists let users post new discussion threads or perform other authorized tasks. I liked the ability to mark a discussion thread as a question, which encourages others to share their experiences or point the originator to an answer. The main toolbar offers an alternate way to create new content, while providing access to “Your Stuff,” such as open questions. As an incentive to answer questions, the top posters are prominently shown on the community home page and elsewhere in the site.