Redwood Shores, Calif. and Boston, Mass. — June 14, 2010 — Saba (NASDAQ: SABA), the premier people systems provider, today announced Saba Collaboration Suite, a real-time collaboration and enterprise business networking solution designed to enable social learning and collaborative performance management.
Saba Collaboration Suite infuses real-time collaboration and enterprise business networking capabilities into learning and performance management people processes. Saba enables enterprises to mobilize and engage their people to drive new strategies, align and connect people to accelerate the flow of business, and cultivate and ignite people knowhow. Saba Collaboration Suite combines Saba Live, a new enterprise business networking offering, and Saba Centra, an enterprise-class web conferencing solution.
Saba Live will integrate Saba’s rich person profile, and will include embedded competency-driven expertise, Twitter-like performance feedback, blended learning, and workplace analytics.
Saba Centra is used globally by many of the world’s largest governments, universities, and Fortune 100 companies that demand best-in-class, reliable, secure, and scalable virtual training, online meetings, and webinars.
News Facts
Saba Collaboration Suite will:
- Bring to market an integrated solution that combines enterprise-class web conferencing and real-time communication with cutting-edge business networking capabilities to enrich learning and performance business processes.
- Power real-time communication with presence, instant messaging, video-enabled channels, VoIP-enabled online meetings, and web conferences.
- Enable organizations to identify, engage, and retain top people as well as quickly onboard new hires, thereby multiplying people’s productivity to outperform the competition.
- Cultivate the knowhow needed in today’s global, multi-generational workforce by deploying a blended enterprise training and learning strategy that incorporates formal and informal learning and knowledge transfer.
- Feature Saba Dynamic Network Analysis (DNA), a workplace analytics platform for visualizing connections between people and resources to provide strategic organizational insight.
Saba Live:
Will enable a dynamic and engaged workforce, where employees, partners, and customers across an enterprise ecosystem can continuously connect and collaborate through Web 2.0 tools such as discussion forums, activity feeds, wiki, blogs, a Facebook-like wall, micro-blogs, resource lists, and social bookmarks.
Is designed to include features such as:
- Unified People Profiles —to provide a complete view of continuously updated competencies, skills, interests, and talent– at the individual, team, and organizational level.
- Expertise Locator — to identify organizational knowledge through powerful search.
- Saba Live Pages — to simplify the creation of rich web pages, masking the complexity found in typical wiki solutions.
- Saba Live Ideas — to support crowd-sourcing innovation in the organization with social voting, rating, and tagging.
- Saba Live Impressions — to enable Twitter-like performance feedback by co-workers, complementing the formal, periodic performance review process with continuous, informal input.
- Saba Live Groups — to create cross-functional communities of practice that can collaborate to get work done.
- Unified View of Content — to allow people to share files, author Saba Live Pages, contribute Internet content, share videos, record web conferences, and federate content from repositories like Microsoft SharePoint. All content can be rated and shared, resulting in an always up-to-date knowledge base that averts stale intranet content.
- Saba Live Conferences — to support virtual conferences powered by Saba Centra Web Conferencing technology; spontaneous, easy setup and recording; and real-time communication.
- Saba Live Channels — to bring YouTube-like ease of video sharing to the enterprise by organizing Saba Centra recordings and videos, enabling formal and social learning within the organization.
- Provides a best-in-class user experience for virtual training that most closely emulates a physical, interactive classroom.
- Enables online meetings and webinars wherever you work – desktop, browser, or mobile device, including Apple iPhone and iPad.
- Includes VoIP, with no extra charges, and enables meetings even in remote low-bandwidth locations.
- Saba Centra is available now in the Cloud (OnDemand) and on-premise.
- Saba Collaboration Suite, including Saba Live, will be available in the Cloud (OnDemand) by the end of August 2010, and on-premise later on in the year.
For more information, please visit www.saba.com
Saba Centra:
Availability
Supporting Comments
“With more than 35,000 restaurants in over 110 countries and territories, Yum! Brands is a dispersed global business with a centralized dedication to customers and people,” said Mary Woolf, director of learning technologies at Yum! Brands. “Saba Learning and Saba Centra are an important part of our people development strategy and will fundamentally change the way we do business. Our employees, the environment, and the learning process itself are becoming more social, and Saba is right there to meet the needs of our people-focused, world-class organization.”
“Saba demonstrates vision and leadership by combining Web 2.0 communications tools, real-time communications and enterprise social networking,” said Zeus Kerravala, senior vice president, enterprise research, Yankee Group. “The combination of a collaboration platform with learning and HR systems is a fundamental transformation needed in this industry.”
“At the Hitachi Data Systems Academy, we enable learning for our employees, partners and customers,” said Nick Howe, vice president, Hitachi Data Systems. “The Saba Learning platform has been used as a core technology for our enterprise-wide mission critical learning initiatives for the past six years. The Saba Learning platform’s enterprise social networking is an innovative technology that will enable continuous learning and employee development necessary for today's agile organization.”
“Collaboration solutions tend to fall into one of two camps, relying on real-time communication via voice, video, and chat or focusing on team-building with persistent, text-oriented collaboration spaces,” said Brad Shimmin, principal analyst, collaboration platforms at Current Analysis. “Building on its Web conferencing and training experience, Saba is seeking to bridge these two worlds with a profile-centric, search-capable social networking platform tuned toward key use cases such as expertise location, social learning, and content sharing.”
“Until today, solutions for social networking have had limited success in enterprise–wide deployments due to inherently weak security models and a lack of true integration with existing business processes,” said Jim Lundy, VP and GM of Collaboration, Saba. “Saba Collaboration Suite uniquely integrates with the leading Saba Learning Suite and Saba Performance Suite to enable global organizations to extend and transform their existing enterprise training and HR business processes.”
About Saba
Saba (NASDAQ:SABA) provides a new class of people systems, bridging learning, people management and collaboration technologies, that have been purpose-built for today’s people-driven enterprises. Saba solutions help unleash the full potential of individuals and teams to work better and work together to achieve excellence. Working with Saba, enterprises are able to mobilize and engage people around new strategies, align and connect people to accelerate the flow of work, and cultivate and ignite knowhow.
Saba's premier global customer base includes the major global organizations that are among industry leaders in financial services, life sciences and healthcare, high tech, automotive and manufacturing, retail, energy and utilities, packaged goods, and public sector organizations, including 51% of the Fortune 100. Saba’s solutions are available both on-premise and OnDemand, and are underpinned by global services capabilities and partnerships encompassing strategic consulting, comprehensive implementation services, and ongoing worldwide support.
Headquartered in Redwood Shores, California, Saba has offices on five continents. For more information, please visit www.saba.com or call +1-877-SABA-101 or +1-650-779-2791.
Legal Notice Regarding Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws, including, without limitation, statements regarding the availability, features and benefits of Saba Collaboration Suite, including Saba Live. Saba's actual results could differ materially from those expressed in any forward-looking statements. Risks and uncertainties Saba faces that could cause results to differ materially include risks associated with: Saba's dependence on growth of the markets for Saba's products, dependence on acceptance of Saba's products by customers and channel partners, fluctuation in customer spending, length of Saba's sales cycle, competition, rapid technological change, dependence on new product introductions and enhancements and potential software defects. Readers should also refer to the section entitled "Risk Factors” on pages 12 through 23 of Saba's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended May 31, 2009 and similar disclosures in subsequent Saba periodic SEC reports. The forward-looking statements and risks stated in this press release are based on information available to Saba today. Saba assumes no obligation to update them.
The information in this release is intended for informational purposes only and may not be incorporated into any contract. It is not a commitment to deliver any material, code, or functionality, and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions. The development, release, and timing of any features or functionality described in this communication remains at the sole discretion of Saba and may change at any time, with or without notice.
Contacts
Saba
Jenni Adair
Director of PR and AR
650.696.1610
jadair@saba.com
Twitter: @SabaSoftware
Activa PR
Emma Rosen
415.385.2843
emma@activapr.com
Twitter: @emrosen
SABA, the Saba logo, Saba Centra and the marks relating to Saba products and services referenced herein are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Saba Software, Inc. or its affiliates. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners
Related Information
> Saba Collaboration Suite
> Saba Live
> Saba Centra Web Conferencing
