Loosing Site

Clearspace is a well designed robust enterprise collaboration application from Jive Software. Out of the box Clearspace lives up to it’s name with a refreshingly uncluttered interface focused on the core tasks of communication and knowledge building.

The design has brought the aesthetics of social networking into the business community, with a relaxing use of space, profile pages, commenting, tag clouds and blogs. But beneath the surface is a pragmatic core.  Organization structures and hierarchies are represented, but they are also opened up easing communication across and between teams.

Architecturally Clearspace runs as a java servlet with clustering built into the design.  It is robust and scalable, capable of deployment to the largest organizations.

It is extensible through server side java plugins that can be embedded in the interface through a number of integration points. It works well with web services and also provides a range of outgoing feeds. This gives several strategies for smoothly combining Clearspace with other applications in your business by:

• using a Clearspace plugin as an interface
• implementing single signon
• embedding Clearspace feeds in third party portal

In addition to targeting Enterprise users with a per seat licensing model, Jive encourages adoption of Clearspace in small business by distributing free copies of the software for installations with up to five users.

On its own, a technical solution will not fix communication problems in an organization. However Clearspace will help improve communications where there is commitment to do so.