Jive Acquires OffiSync
Jive Software has acquired OffiSync, a provider of social solutions to the Microsoft environment, including Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Office, and Microsoft SharePoint, for an undisclosed amount.
The acquisition will combine Jive's Social Business platform with OffiSync's Microsoft integration products to deliver a breakthrough in how companies embrace social to transform the way they work.
"This is a game-changing acquisition for Jive," said Tony Zingale, Jive's CEO. "With OffiSync, Jive has the opportunity to become the most widely adopted Social Business platform for over 600 million Microsoft users, giving them the ability to bring social to the way they work."
OffiSync's products make it possible for millions of Microsoft users to seamlessly integrate with Jive's leading Social Business platform directly from the Microsoft environment. With OffiSync, companies will be able to liberate and 'socialize' the content trapped in Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Office, and Microsoft SharePoint. Jive will then seamlessly integrate it within the larger enterprise social graph in its platform, bringing the right information to the right person at the right time.
In the Jive Social Business platform, OffiSync will extend the following advantages:
- Shift from personal productivity to group collaboration. Users can now leverage Microsoft applications to create content while also sharing, annotating, and collaborating on the resulting documents using Jive's advanced social capabilities – all without leaving their familiar user interface.
- Liberate email. With OffiSync, instead of hitting "reply all" from the Microsoft Outlook interface, users can immediately promote important conversations directly into a social discussion on the Jive platform. Users can also view and reply to discussions on the Jive platform from their Microsoft Outlook inbox.
- Bring the social web to Microsoft Outlook. By supplementing the contact information in Microsoft Outlook with profiles and activities from Jive as well as the most popular social networking sites, Jive and OffiSync bring the power of the social graph to the Microsoft Outlook user.
The OffiSync team, most of whom are currently based in Tel Aviv, Israel, will join Jive's engineering organization. Jive plans to build upon OffiSync's engineering presence in Tel Aviv< to launch a new R&D center. The team in Israel will be led by Roy Antebi, OffiSync's co-founder and chief technology officer, who will join Jive as vice president of engineering.
Oudi Antebi, OffiSync co-founder and CEO, will join Jive as senior vice president of enterprise solutions. In his new role, Oudi will drive Jive's vision and strategy for integration with Microsoft and the broader enterprise stack. Oudi will be based out of Jive's headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif.
"We are thrilled to join Jive," said Oudi Antebi. "Jive is bringing innovation back to the enterprise, and we're excited to join forces to drive the social business revolution."
OffiSync is a long-standing partner of Jive. The two companies have collaborated and integrated their products for more than a year to deliver social solutions to mutual customers. As a result of the partnership, the Jive integration with Microsoft Office is available immediately with Jive 4.5 and Jive 5. Integration with Microsoft Outlook will be released later this year.
OffiSync is the third significant acquisition that Jive has completed in the past 18 months. Previous acquisitions include Proximal Labs, a 'big data' company in April and FiltrBox, a social media monitoring company in January 2010.