//Jan.2018//
One of our biggest concerns, heading into the Lithium acquisition of Lithium JX (Jive-x) from Jive, was that we are a hosted community, and tout ourselves as being drastically more complex than a cloud-based community.
The truth? We are. The fallacy? It doesn't mean we can't move to the cloud.
SolarWinds benefits from having one of the best Jive platform developers in the history of Jive-x (and now Lithium JX). The instant the acquisition was announced, he starting working the phone lines, emails, and LinkedIn accounts until he was able to get some time with anyone at Lithium who may have some answers. Simultaneously, Lithium was zippy in getting us some face time with @RikusP, @DebbieC, @AndreaC, and @MichaelP.
At this point, I'm calling these four the dream team. If Lithium hadn't been so responsive, we were just a snap of our fingers away from leaping over to a competitor and forgetting our life with Jive and the Lithium JX sale.
All it took was an hour with the dream team and a sync with our amazing dev partner to know, cloud wasn't just an option - it would be more scalable, cheaper, and velcro-ing us much more closely to the bleeding edge of community platform innovation. Here's another way to look at it: Jive and Lithium went head-to-head for years as the two dominant external community solution providers, and only Lithium is left standing. Where Jive folded to Aurea, and Aurea folded to the competition and retreated to the safety of internal communities, Lithium doubled down on their investment in the future of the industry. This, in addition to spending a reported $200 million on Klout a few years ago, means we've taken sides with the powerhouse. Lithium is the New England Patriots of external communities. It hurts to say, as a Seahawks fan, but it's true.
Why did I mention we were so complex? What are we doing that creates such a hindrance to moving from a hosted JX instance to the cloud? Stay tuned in Entry 3, coming soon.
Ben Garves
THWACK Community
//Ben Garves is the Senior Product Manager at SolarWinds, overseeing the success of theirTHWACK online community for IT professionals. SolarWinds hosts a 150,000-member external community, currently on the Lithium JX platform.//
