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Saba

ABA11 Winner / How to Enter

Company: Saba, Redwood Shores, CA
Company Description: Saba provides a set of People Cloud Applications including enterprise learning, talent management, and collaboration solutions delivered on the Cloud. Today’s enterprises are using Saba to mobilize and engage people around strategies and initiatives, align people to accelerate the flow of business, and cultivate and share knowhow to effectively compete and succeed.
Nomination Category: New Product Awards & Product Management Categories
Nomination Sub Category: New Product or Service of the Year - Computer Software - Software as a Service

Nomination Title: Saba Software's Saba Live

    Tell the story about this nominated product or service (up to 500 words). Describe its function, features, benefits, and sales to date. You may include hyperlinks to product photos and data sheets. IMPORTANT: Begin each link with http://, and enclose each link in square brackets; for example, [http://www.youraddress.com]:

        Since the launch of Saba Live, Saba’s newest generation of social collaboration
software, in summer 2010, Saba has made great strides in the social software
market. Within the past year, Saba Live has won the Vendor Innovation Award
from Bersin & Associates’ Learning Leader program and has been named by many
influential media outlets as an original and interesting product. Saba has a
history of delivering real-time and social collaboration products for over a
decade, and Saba’s collaboration customers over the years include Yum! Brands,
The U.S. Army, FedEx, Bose, Grant Thornton, Bank of Montreal, the Internal
Revenue Service, Legal and General, Stanford University, East Carolina
University, and the HOPE Foundation. Saba is a trusted vendor to over 1,400
customers, including 19 million users in over 150 countries. Customers include
over half of the Fortune 100.

Saba Live is currently being used in diverse customer applications, including
powering social intranets, creating secure extended enterprise communities that
include employees, customers and partners, rapid on-boarding of new hires,
social learning, social web conferencing, and building a culture of rapid
innovation in the organization.

        In addition, Saba Live is being used internally as a social intranet in Saba’s
Global employee community. Seeing its popularity internally, Saba launched both
a Partner Portal and a Customer Community powered by Saba Live, transforming
the way our company interacts with customers and partners. We now use our
product day-to-day to connect and collaborate with the entire extended
enterprise. By using the product ourselves, we can provide our customers with a
complete, honest look into the how the product works, and how to fix any issues
that may occur. Our intention is to provide the most complete and modern
collaborative environment on the market. Our ability to adapt to new
technologies will provide us with the ability to meet these goals.

        Saba’s collaboration technology is differentiated from the competition because
it is architected on the concept of the unified people profile. A person’s
profile includes formal certifications and training, information from the HR
and Learning management systems of record, and crowd-sourced or social
information. This combination of formal and informal, or structured and
unstructured information in the profile is unique to Saba.

        Another unique aspect of Saba’s social technology is the embedding of social
technologies into formal business processes. Saba’s integration of
Collaboration, Performance Management and Learning solutions (collectively
called Saba People Cloud Applications) transforms the people processes in an
organization to provide an on-demand solution (SaaS) that helps motivate and
engage employees, enable continuous performance management processes, and power
social learning.

        Saba recognizes that in order to thrive in an increasingly competitive business
environment, businesses need collaboration. It requires enterprise employees to
engage, mobilize and collaborate effectively, aligning processes across many
functions and business groups. Saba Live provides secure groups for building
and managing communities working toward a common goal. Groups can be organized
by job, role, certifications and competencies. Members can access collaboration
tools such as easily searchable threaded discussions, community-authored,
document sharing, and bookmarking.

    List hyperlinks to any online news stories, press releases, product reviews, or other documents that support the claims made in the section above. IMPORTANT: Begin each link with http://, and enclose each link in square brackets; for example, [http://www.youraddress.com]:

        Websites
•Product Site: http://www.saba.com/saba-people-systems/collaboration-suite/saba-live.aspx
•Product Resources : http://www.saba.com/resources/?p=11

        Video
•“The Ask”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkP49rBrq68&feature=related
•E2TV : Saba Live demo at Enterprise 2.0 Santa Clara, November 2010:
http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1847353409?bctid=677942510001
•Saba Live Introduction:
http://www.youtube.com/user/SabaSoftwareTV#p/u/9/t0qtCvjQ7k8
•Saba Live Overview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qbnvf5962Ms
•Saba Live Demo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkGwX3QWhJo&feature=related

        Articles
•The Business of Talent – Josh Bersin's Blog – July 26, 2010, Saba introduces
Saba Live: http://www.bersin.com/blog/post/2010/07/Talent-Management-Systems--Market-Update.aspx
•Collaboration 2.0- Oliver Marks Blog- April 14, 2011, Saba - Global Formal &
Informal Learning: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/collaboration/saba-global-formal-informal-learning/1968?tag=mantle_skin;content
•eContent.mag – Dec. 7, 2010, Saba Live Connects with Microsoft Tools:
http://www.econtentmag.com/Articles/News/News-Feature/Saba-Live-Connects-with-Microsoft-Tools-72538.htm
•eChannelline – Dec. 7, 2010, Saba stresses social networking in redo of
channel tools, program: http://www.echannelline.com/usa/story.cfm?item=26396
•CMSWire- Sept 2, 2010, Saba Delivers All-in-One Enterprise Collaboration Tool:
http://www.cmswire.com/cms/enterprise-20/saba-delivers-allinone-enterprise-collaboration-tool-008487.php
•TMCNews- Sept. 2, 2010, Saba Launches Next- Generation Cloud-Based Enterprise
Business Networking Solution: http://hosted-voip.tmcnet.com/feature/articles/99235-saba-launches-next-generation-cloud-based-enterprise-business.htm
•KM World- Oct. 29, 2010, Collaboration: A new picture develops:
http://www.kmworld.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=70847&PageNum=1
•Computerworld- Oct. 26, 2010, Sydney Water deploys collaboration to address
knowledge management:
http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/365576/sydney_water_deploys_collaboration_address_knowledge_management/?fp=4&fpid=1398720840

        Press Releases:
•Saba Receives Vendor Innovation Award for Saba Live from Bersin & Associates
Learning Leaders Program: http://www.saba.com/company/press-releases/2011/news-0214-bersin-learning-leader-vendor-innovation-award.aspx
•Saba to Showcase Latest Enterprise People Systems Collaboration Solutions at
Gartner Portal, Contents and Collaboration Summit 2011:
http://www.saba.com/company/press-releases/2011/news-0308-Gartner-Portal-Contents-Collaboration-Summit-2011.aspx
•Educe Group Selects Saba Live to Drive Collaboration Across Its Enterprise:
http://www.saba.com/company/press-releases/2011/news-0201-educe-group-saba-live.aspx   
•Saba Unveils the Saba Live Connector for Microsoft SharePoint:
http://www.saba.com/company/press-releases/2010/20101208-saba-unveils-the-saba-live-connector-for-sharepoint.aspx
•Saba Launches Saba Partner Connect, an Expanded Global Alliances and Channels
Program (Saba Partner Connections, Powered by Saba Live, Allows for Enterprise
Networking of Alliance Partners with Saba Partner Team and Product Experts):
http://www.saba.com/company/press-releases/2010/news_1101_partner_connect.aspx
•Power Up Your People: Saba Live Makes the Promise of Enterprise Collaboration
a Reality: http://www.saba.com/company/press-releases/2010/news_0901_saba_live.aspx

    Provide a brief (up to 100 words) biography about the leader(s) of the team that developed this nominated product or service:

        Saba Live is a next-generation cloud-based enterprise social networking
solution. It includes powerful Web 2.0 social tools integrated with Web
Conferencing for real time collaboration. It combines rich personal profiles,
competency-driven expertise, Twitter-like performance feedback, social
learning, secure groups and workplace analytics to deliver an unprecedented
collaboration experience that connects the whole extended enterprise. Often,
enterprise social networking enables collaboration without a specific business
process. Saba Live, however, delivers actual business results by integrating
social networking technologies into critical enterprise-wide people processes,
including employee performance management and employee, partner and customer
training and development.