The Forrester Wave: Collaboration Platforms, Q3 2009

In Forrester's survey of collaboration platform vendors, the traditional vendors IBM, Microsoft and Novell offer the broadest functionality. All have invested heavily in their collaboration products in recent years: IBM Lotus in Quickr and Connections, Microsoft in SharePoint, and Novell in SiteScape. However, a number of challengers offer unique strengths.

Strong performers include:

• MindTouch, which has the support of a strong open-source community
• Open Text, especially when matched with the Open Text ECM Suite
• Atlassian, whose Confluence and JIRA offerings are popular with IT users
• Jive Software, with strong social networking tools
• Socialtext, with innovative content generation and communication features
• Traction Software, which seeks to simplify collaboration

Contenders include:

• Cisco, whose WebEx offering shows strong promise
• Central Desktop, the only pure software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering