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