Toshiba gets more connected with Jive Social Business Software

I know, I know. It seems like I’m falling into a bit of Jive fanboi-ism. But man oh man, if these folks aren’t rolling out one impressive announcement after another these days. And in a day and age where we continue to get doom and gloom about the economy and business prospects, these Jive announcements are like a little ray of sunshine.

Last week they were taking wing with Lufthansa and this week Jive announced that they had signed Toshiba’s sales team and resellers to power a new community designed to improve sales communications and collaboration called Toshiba eXCHANGE.

“Toshiba eXCHANGE is exciting because of its user-generated content and leading-edge technology, but most importantly because of the opportunity it provides our extended Toshiba family members to easily connect and share knowledge,” said Bill Melo, Vice President, Marketing & Enterprise Services and Solutions, Toshiba America Business Solutions (TABS) in a press release. “It’s estimated that only 20 percent of an organization’s knowledge is actually captured in written documents, while the remaining value-rich information resides exclusively in the heads of employees. Toshiba eXCHANGE gives members the chance to easily document, share and seek that remaining 80 percent of information, therefore creating new opportunities for sales and service success.”

Aside from the good news being welcome, the most interesting about this announcement to me? This continues to place Jive into accounts that have them serving complementary roles to more traditional business systems—like internal communications, Business Intelligence, Customer Relationship Management, and Sales Force Automation tools.

And that’s not a bad role to be filling. Especially as businesses look for ways to improve their internal collaboration in light of the rocky economy.

Could this string of wins be setting Jive up for a lucrative liquidity event? Or—in English—are they becoming an even juicer acquisition target? Or could they be laying the foundation for becoming the first big Portland software company in a long long time?

It’s hard to say. But either way, it’s good to see Jive continuing to rack up the wins.

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Published by Rick Turoczy

More than mildly obsessed with the Portland startup community. Founder and editor at Silicon Florist. Cofounder and general manager at PIE. Follow me on Twitter: @turoczy View all posts by Rick Turoczy