Jive Software set to add VoIP to its collaboration server

Jive Software Inc. on Monday plans to announce the next generation of its collaboration server that will let corporate users initiate voice calls from its instant messaging tool.

The new OpenFire 3.2 server will let voice calls be initiated from a user's computer by clicking on a contact name and then selecting the call option, the company said. The calls are connected over voice-over-IP technology, and users can communicate using VoIP headsets, phones or similar devices plugged into USB ports, said David Hersh, Jive's CEO.

The new version of the server can also work with phone systems that use Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), he added. OpenFire 3.2 uses the Jingle protocol created by Google Inc. that allows for peer-to-peer signaling for multimedia communications like video and voice, Hersh said.

"This [OpenFire 3.2] becomes the open-source Skype for the enterprise," Hersh said. "Security, the ability to handle certificates … it is all managed at the server level because this has been built for the enterprise."

Jive has worked to position IM as its beachhead for enterprise clients and is building off that with additional real-time collaboration features like voice, said Hersh. The new version of the server, which uses one client for IM and voice, also adds single sign-on and the ability to handle 30,000 user connections, according to Jive

In an unrelated announcement, Jive last month launched Clearspace, a unified collaboration workspace to support the use of wikis, blogs, RSS feeds, tagging and other Web 2.0 forms of collaboration.