Clearspace Alternatives

I don't know if all of you know how blogs work on TypePad, but we all get a stats panel, and we can see where people are coming in.

One of the most popular avenue, not surprisingly, is searches.  And if you click on the link, you can see what people were searching for.

I've gotten more than a few hits on "Clearspace alternatives" or similar, so I thought I'd offer my thoughts on this.

And, no, I'm not getting paid by Jive Software for this ;-)

The Story

When we got into this, we spent a few weeks figuring out what was important to us, and what wasn't.  We set up a small prototypical internal SM site (using DotNetNuke -- not recommended) to have the discussion, and to learn in the process.

We spent another few weeks looking at vendors, and then we made our decision to go with Clearspace from Jive Software.  That was back in August of 2007.

But, even though we're married, we're not dead.  We've continued to look at alternative environments, and -- so far -- we haven't found anything that we wished we would have done instead.  If anything, we think we made a real smart decision.

Here's Why

Our core belief is that social media is 95% about people, and 5% about technology.  We wanted a platform that let people dive in and start being social as transparently as possible.  We got that.

We didn't want to be in the software customization or open source figure-out-how-to-fix-it business.  We wanted a platform to get on to the serious work of social media.  We wanted a commercial-grade product.  We got that.

The UI for us was key.  It had to be attractive, engaging and fun.  We didn't want to spend time on training, etc.  We didn't want one way to do blogs, another way to do wikis, another way to do forums, etc.  We got that.

We also realized we didn't know what we didn't know, so we wanted the option (hope we never have to use it) of modifying style sheets, widgets, java code, etc. if we found ourselves there.  We got that.

We didn't see this as a document-centric problem.  We think social media is all about communication, not creating vast repositories of stuff.  So we weren't interested in Lotus, or Sharepoint, or even EMC's eRoom and Documentum products.  We know we'll need stronger content management capabilities in the future, but we don't expect Jive to provide that in their product, only the ability to integrate with stronger back-end content management and workflow platforms.  We got that.

We wanted a relationship with our vendor -- this is a journey, not an event.  Jive has done a better-than-average job of listening to us, working with us, adding features, finding workarounds, etc.  Yes, they could do better (couldn't we all?) but -- generally speaking -- we're more than satisfied.  We got that.

The Bottom Line

If you're like us (and many of you are), let me make this simple.  To the best of our knowledge, there is no viable alternative in the marketplace to Clearspace from Jive Software.  The more we progress, the more sure we are of this statement.

We see other projects where people are trying to lash a bunch of open source-ish stuff together.  Not only won't it work as well, I'd offer they're losing valuable time and resources focusing on the wrong part of the problem. 

We see people who go Sharepoint simply because it comes from Microsoft, and it fits in well with everything else they have.  Yes, that's true, but it ain't social media, and it wasn't what we wanted.

And we see all sorts of content management apps lash on a wiki interface and say "we've solved it".  You haven't.

Want to be successful in social media in your enterprise?  Pick a package, get it running, and move on to the real work ahead of you. 

We did, and we're glad we did.

Comments

[Jason]

Chuck,

Great write-up. Jive definitely makes a great product. However, if you don't have the budget or resources, there is another option. Check out GroupSwim. It is a viable alternative to Jive for on-demand online community. In addition to being very simple and easy to set up, it utilizes semantic technology to automatically tag and organize all content; this includes emails that are submitted to the community. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles that Clearspace has, but it is a great option depending on your requirements.

Jason

[Scott]

My manager and I are part of a huge company. Yesterday we evaluated Clearspace and we are impressed. I just found this post today and it summed it up for me.

[Chuck Hollis]

Glad you found this somewhat helpful ...

[Vitaly]

I can see a lot of benefits in using Clearspace. What I am curious is if you've been using it on everyday bases.

[Chuck Hollis]

Hi Vitaly -- the simple answer is, yes, we are.

Our implementation is a general purpose platform available to all EMC employees for any reasonable purpose.

As of this writing, we have around 3,000 named users (an a lot more unknown visitors), about 60 or so communities, and so on.

It's now part of our everyday life.

Does this answer your question?

[peter]

Hi Chuck,

I would be interested in the list of alternative solutions you took a look at - could you send me the list?

that would be great
peter

[Ben]

I second Peter. If you could send it by email, Chuck that would be great ... or why not post it here. One of the aspects of diligent decision making is known alternatives, and many of us would find this helpful!

[Chuck Hollis]

Guys, there's not much to share. The work we did is now over a year old; so much has changed since then -- although, I doubt we would change our choices.

Most of the work was around "what's important" vs. "what's not". And that can already be found on previous posts here ...

[Adarsh mehta]

Be sure that prices will surprise you.

Clearspace and Telligent are business class products, which combine the popular tools of social software such as blogs, groups, projects, tasks, discussions, polls etc. By using them for your company every day needs, you will experience the improvement of the communication between customers and your personnel, which will increase the loyalty of your clientele and your public image. This is quite important, don’t you think so?

One of the main tasks of every business is the creation of a solid team of colleagues. When every person is a part of a team, which works on a common task, the lively interest arises and joint efforts become more and more effective.

If you want to find the best way to solve your issues in Marketing and human resources and allow your personnel to discuss the problems together and share the ideas, Clearspace and Telligent are the products of your choice. The rich functionality and the reliability are the factors, that made Jive and Telligent Community leaders of the social community products. More than 15% of Fortune 500 companies use these solutions in their every day work.

You have the opportunity to purchase these products at a very affordable price, just contact me. Also professional team will help you to solve any configuration or usage issue.

You can contact me by email or MSN, and I will answer all your questions and help you to make the right choice.

Best regards,
Adarsh Mehta
mail: [email protected]
msn: [email protected]