Igloo vs. Jive vs. XWiki

Igloo is a well-suited option for teams/companies that want to build an employee intranet with some other interesting features, like file storage and sharing, internal communications, and resource and knowledge management. All of these features may help your workers increase productivity significantly by centralizing everything in one robust and reliable platform. However, it can be less appropriate if costs are a problem for you, due to the pricing. So, if you will not be using several features and just want an intranet for you company, you may want to go with another solution.

Incentivized

It's definitely worth considering Jive for the type of application we've developed i.e. a central shared repository for all employees to host and discuss information. I can't say I have ever used a superior tool, but they may exist. I'm just not sure I would want to use it exclusively for file hosting, though. It does integrate with various other tools, so perhaps it would be fine if used in conjunction with another tool for that purpose.

Incentivized

XWiki is very well suited for a very wide range of web collaboration and web development.

• Notifications: Igloo can push email updates to users.
• Organization: Igloo allows for you to create pages, sub pages, and many layer deep sections. You can also organize the layout of your pages.
• Versioning: it's super easy to reserve and edit documents for offline use. And you can see who last edited a document and when.
• Offline access: there's a desktop version you can use very easily. It's really good for dropping a bunch of files at once.

Incentivized

• Individual design
• Presence of Russian language (localization can be independently established)
• You can configure several information tapes with different themes. One for work, the second for communication
• A newly-arrived network user immediately receives a prepared block for beginners. After completing several game tasks, the user will receive the basics of using Jive.
• There is a template for each scenario. There is even a template for planning R&D, and there are more than twenty of them.
• Integrates with MS Office, Google Drive, Google Docs
• There are all platforms (even Winphone and blackberry)
• You can create forum threads

Incentivized

• XWiki makes it easy to manage semi-structured information, which is at the heart of every knowledge nexus of organizations. It makes it easy to manage in a single system both structured data (such as memberships, projects), and unstructured data.
• XWiki offers a very rich API for creating enterprise applications quickly that are easy to maintain and evolve collaboratively.
• XWiki templating and skinning system is extremely flexible and powerful.

• Their UI is not used-friendly. Their use of Igloo-specific terminology made it difficult to understand how each function of the site worked. They would repeatedly say, for example, "a ___ is really a ___" vs. just calling it what the function actually is.
• Implementation was a far cry from their sales support. After basically nickel-and-diming you for everything, they - very poorly - cap your use of their implementation support team.
• Overall, Igloo didn't work for our organization because they do multiple things decently vs a few things excellently. The experience with Igloo was unremarkable.

Incentivized

• Search functionality is very weak
• The information architecture and taxonomy doesnt allow for easy discoverability of content
• It's hard to navigate the and find spaces/groups that I already know about
• The main profile/interface does not allow easy access to key tasks or common tasks.

• While the basic pieces are available for turning XWiki into an advanced semantic system, some features could be made available more prominently to the user for easing the use of faceted and typed links, paving the way for a new era of collaborative knowledge sharing.

There are always external factors that can impact this decision but currently, the Jive platform is maintaining its lead in the market place in this area. If the innovation in this space by Jive continues, then this number will remain high. Integration with other systems and adaptability to changes in the market or in client needs will also make this decision hard to predict more then 6 months into the future

It was harder to use that expected. The admin needs to be code savvy to truly customize the system. And users need to trained on the system and the setup. Trainings and monitoring need to continue to enforce use.

Uptime was OK. But there was one day that the system crashed for a whole day. Our company was unable to operate. And all the plugins to word/excel froze causing those systems to freeze.

Jive posted a statement to the media saying all customers were up, but we were not.

The product worked as designed. It just didn't work for our needs.

They did an OK job when I needed them. Except for the one day the system went down. Jive pointed the finger at the hosting company, and the hosting company pointed the finger at Jive. No reliable information came to us.

Jive online training is there. It is OK/average. I feel some other companies are doing better. It is not a piece that is required to have a successfully implementation, but it could be useful to improve it

If I did this over, I would hire out the implementation. They know the best practices and could have guided us to make an easier to use setup.

Easy to use, cost-effective, and benefit in organizational culture development and information sharing across various employees and from higher management. Great customer support and continuous development to make the software better for users. It allows better collaboration with a little bit of fun too and requires less resources to handle.

Incentivized

We had a Google phone number set up before and Jive was a lot better option than that. It is more consistent and can be configured much easier and with more advanced settings. Additionally, based on the pricing as well as working with the rep on our account, it was a perfect option for us

Incentivized

XWiki key differentiators in my opinion:

• Fast app development framework with very rich API
• Open-source strategy, opening the way to collaborative innovation

• Helps with employee retention - especially in a virtual environment.
• Costs less than a separate wiki system for storing key information.

Incentivized

• reduce email traffic
• reduce amount of files/documents scattered & lost across shared drives
• increased discovery, awareness and interaction of historically more separated individuals & team functions across the organisation
• from an IT perspective, we've benefited from improved IT operations (e.g. troubleshooting info shared and easily searched/found with all team members - such that even junior team members can solve technical problems outside of business hours, lessening the burden for standby/call-in for more senior team members)

Incentivized

• XWiki has a positive impact on the OW2 communication and collaborations strategies. It saves time when developing applications.