Jive talking with Matt Tucker

The CTO of Jive Software explains how his cloud-based social business software differs from consumer plays and suits enterprise users

With its latest release, Jive Software can set your organization up and running with social business software as fast as you can say Facebook. Is this a good thing? Do we really want to give enterprise-level companies this ability, given their lack of understanding and abuse of the social media tools they already have? This week I chatted with Matt Tucker, co-founder and CTO, to discuss what's unique about his company's cloud computing strategy, Jive's relationship with Amazon, and Jive's potential as a cloud-only company.

[ Keep up on the latest in cloud developments with InfoWorld's Cloud Computing newsletter and Cloud Computing channel. ]

whurley: What is unique about the cloud computing strategy you're announcing today?
Tucker: We're doing two things today. First, we're releasing Jive Express, a cloud service that lets enterprise business users get up and running with social business software within minutes. There's no waiting for lengthy IT provisioning and setup processes. Departments and cross-company teams have never had such easy access to a collaborative social software product this powerful -- it's the same incredibly rich platform that gets rolled out to tens of thousands employees at Fortune 500 companies.

Second, we're talking about our larger cloud strategy and how this initial release fits in with all the work we're doing. We've used virtualization to drive amazing levels of cost efficiency, enabling a single-tenant architecture that provides maximum security and data isolation. We know that enterprise companies are still in the intial stages of cloud adoption, so we're making it very easy to start in the cloud but then move to on-premise or our more traditional hosted environment as the implementation scales. This hybrid approach is unique, and we believe it's the best approach for enterprise cloud adoption. Jive Express is the first of several cloud offerings you'll see us launch.

whurley: How does the new cloud computing strategy differ from Jive's hosted offerings of the past?
Tucker: By leveraging the cloud and virtualization, we're able to get a new community up and running within minutes and for a low cost. We've also tailored the experience specifically for teams that are just starting with social business software, through features like improved e-mail integration and a success dashboard that makes recommendations about how to improve participation. When customers are ready for all the customizations and deeper integrations provided by the full Jive SBS product, we make it easy to transition from the cloud to our enterprise hosted environment or on-premise.