Jive Software has long been the darling of the Enterprise Collaboration & Social Software space. Yes, they have decent (though not spectacular) technology, but the company has always been savvier about "message." Jive talked social networking as an alternative to SharePoint 2007 when that was hot, then pivoted to more of a collaboration message as customers got more serious, then joined the cloud/API/ecosystem bandwagons at the right time, and so on.

But now Jive has IPO'ed, and customers have reasonable expectations about understanding where the company will go after transitioning beyond it's venture-fueled youth. Financial analysts seem to expect more of same regarding the company's stock price, but if you know us, then you know that we don't focus on that. What matters is vendor "fit" for you the software buyer.

And in that regard I think Jive's biggest challenges going forward will prove institutional. Jive's a "tweener" vendor: no longer small and agile, but lacking the huge resources to execute globally in way that, say, an IBM can. Moreover, Jive's offerings are divided among significantly different use-cases (external communities and internal collaboration), and delivery models (hosted and on-premise). Doubtless this diversifies revenue streams in  ways that appeal to equity markets, but is this strategy best for customers? I have my doubts. It's very hard to reconcile the inevitable codebase forks.

Meantime, customers have hinted to us that they wish Jive would invest more in refactoring the underlying platform itself. Jive's core, Java-based platform is rich and therefore complicated -- and thus prone to some of same problems that the big players experience. Case in point: readers of our evaluation report know that many Jive customers remain stuck on previous versions because extensive customization can make upgrades unusually fraught.

Of course, refactoring a codebase while maintaining backwards compatibility with a large, diverse installed base is an unusually complex undertaking for any vendor. But now that Jive has grown up, customers should reasonably expect them to be able to pull it off. It's where the question gets called of finding sufficient resources while also scratching Wall Street's quarterly itch. We'll keep watching, on your behalf.