Jive and Egnyte have announced a partnership that ties Jive's collaboration suite with Egnyte's enterprise filesharing services, in a move that gives customers a new option while raising questions about Jive's long-time relationship with Box. Here are the details from their joint announcement:

With the secure integration between the two companies, joint customers also have the flexibility to edit and publish content in the platform of their choice while keeping the entire organization in the loop with content that is continuously synced between Egnyte and Jive.

The reality of today's business environment is that companies around the world have different standards, requirements or operational philosophies for how and where information is shared and accessed. The partnership offers the freedom to choose from three deployment models:  Hosted in the cloud for easy accessibility, stored locally to meet security and regulatory requirements, or synced in a hybrid environment. Jive's interactive intranet hub model and Egnyte's flexible file services bring out the best from such a hybrid environment by allowing employees to choose how they collaborate, while protecting their organization's data.

Jive is offering the Egnyte integration through a new promotional package, good through the end of the year. Called QuickStart, it "provides a complete, out-of-the-box, turnkey interactive intranet for companies with 2,000 or fewer employees," along with Jive's mobile apps and integrations with other productivity tools. 

POV: Jive Thinking Outside the Box

One thing to watch going forward is the relationship between Jive and Box, says Constellation Research analyst Alan Lepofsky. The companies have been close, with Box CEO Aaron Levie appearing at JiveWorld and former Jive CEO Tony Zingale showing up at BoxWorks, Lepofsky notes.

"Now, Box seems to be more focused on IBM, so perhaps Jive needed to look elsewhere for file-sharing partnerships," he says. "Egnyte is a good option, since they have on-premises and cloud based models, where as Box is cloud only. Jive still has on-prem customers, so Egnyte is a good fit for those not looking to go cloud.