Lithium adds Jive-x tech to its customer community platform

Customer community/social management provider Lithium has announced it is acquiring Jive Software’s external community business, Jive-x.

The deal terms were not made public. Jive-x currently has more than 250 client companies for its customer and partner communities, and its key features will be integrated into Lithium. After spinning off Jive-x, Jive will focus on its employee-oriented collaboration software.

Lithium president and CEO Rob Tarkoff told me via email that the Jive-x platform is “really strong in partner integrations, APIs, document management and event management,” and that the purchase is both about acquiring the tech and the customers.

He noted that Lithium, over the past 12 months, has been repositioning itself from being a community-oriented company to offering a variety of products, including a social media management (SMM) platform launched a year ago.

“The tight integration of SMM to help manage community is a key differentiator for us,” he added, which is now boosted by the additional capabilities acquired from Jive-x.

In May, Vista Equity Partners acquired Lithium. The investment group bought marketing platform Marketo last year, which is similarly showing an aggressiveness in expanding its competitive position, as with the Google alliance announced last week. No synergies between the two sibling properties have yet been announced, but Tarkoff told me his company “will be exploring how we can better work with all Vista companies.”

Jive-x’s 250+ customers will eventually be given the opportunity to migrate to Lithium, although support for the Jive-x platform will continue indefinitely. Markoff said the movement of any Jive-x employees to Lithium is still in discussion.