Jive Software takes in $15 million to run with Web 2.0 collaboration

Fueled by a round of venture capital, Jive Software is pushing into the corporate technology market with lightweight Web collaboration software.

The company is expected to announce next week that Sequoia Capital has invested $15 million into Jive Software which has been self-funded and profitable until now.

Jive, perhaps best known for its online forum software, is focusing the company on Clearspace, a product first written about here and commercially introduced earlier this year.

The software is meant to be a lightweight alternative to more structured document management applications like Microsoft's SharePoint. With Clearspace, end users can start wikis, write blogs and share documents without significant upfront training, according to the company.

That lightweight, end-user focused approach to collaboration is starting to get interest from large companies, said Dave Hersh, Jive Software's CEO.

"We're getting RFPs (request for proposals) from the CIOs of very large companies," Hersh said. "A lot of it comes down to organizations stuck with too much structure with SharePoint or with blogs and wikis running rampant inside companies that are rarely sanctioned by IT."

The company has about 100 customers for Clearspace and will use the venture capital to fund expanded sales and product development.

[elements2]

On a related note...

Centric CRM has acquired Team Elements, an Open Source
Collaboration Suite with Wiki, Blog, Documents, Brainstorming,
Projects and Search throughout. The next version will have
community improvements.