Whither Jive Software?

When a once stratospheric "growth stock" starts returning only earthly levels of revenue growth, Wall Street will pounce.  That's what happened to Jive Software, which saw its marketcap shrink by nearly 80% in recent years. 

Typically I'd caution you the enterprise technology buyer not to pay too much attention to vendor valuation swings, since they're not always correlated with the actual value  their technology delivers to you.  And indeed in this case, Real Story Group customer surveys find unusually high satisfaction rates among Jive licensees.

Still, Jive's situation has elevated already high levels of rumors that the company could get acquired.  From a customer perspective, any future buyer here will matter -- a lot.

My colleague Kashyap Kompella and I came up with this "Suitorbility" graphic to chart likely suitors against potential customer impact.

Source: Real Story Group

The chart comes from a larger briefing we prepared, "What Does the Future Hold for Jive Software?" [$$$ - but available free to our subscribers].  As you can see, Jive theoretically has many potential suitors -- but not all make ideal owners from your standpoint.

For a deeper look at how Jive stacks up against its competitors, consult our Social-Collaboration Vendor Evaluation Research.