Long before it became a popular idea, I started to suggest that social networking would take hold within organizations of all sizes to help them better coordinate their increasingly dispersed workers and geographically spread customers and partners.

In the same way that business people have become accustom to instant messaging and texting as a part of their everyday habits, they are increasingly adopting social networking tools and techniques to support their day-to-day activities.

The latest measure of this growing trend is Jive Software’s latest quarterly results.

The company went public last December and reported very impressive second quarter results yesterday. Billings grew 41% yr/yr and subscription revenue grew 59%, while its consulting revenue  as a % of total revenue declined as its solutions have become easier to adopt.

The company’s rapid growth is a reflection of the rising demand for Cloud-based ‘engagement’ apps, such as social CRM and internal productivity tools, offered on a subscription basis.

But, it is also very important to note that Jive offers its solutions via public Cloud services and on-premise, a hybrid approach which I’ve been predicting since 2009 will become the norm despite its operational inefficiencies. Less than two-thirds (63% ) of Jive’s revenues were public cloud related and 37% were deployed on-premise.

The company’s ‘Try Jive’ freemium offer has also proven to be successful, generating over 60 new customers during the past quarter. Continuing to achieve high conversion rates is a critical.

Most importantly, Jive’s renewal rate was over 90%, and 110% when including upsells.  This clearly indicates the high level of satisfaction which Jive is achieving among its customers and is a key measure of success in the SaaS/Cloud industry.

Looking forward, Jive expects subscription revenue to grow as a proportion of its overall revenue and consulting revenue to continue to decline as its solutions become easier to deploy and users become more skilled at doing so.

Equally important, Wall Street financial analysts are also becoming bullish about Jive and social apps in general, despite the Facebook IPO debacle.

The SaaS/Cloud industry has Salesforce.com to thank for putting its marketing machine behind the ‘social enterprise’ idea and continuously rolling out  brand-name customer success stories that illustrate the tangible business benefits associate with going social.

So, as I recommended nearly a year ago, IT/business decision-makers should be asking themselves – how should we adopt social apps to achieve our corporate objectives?

Jive Software Salesforce.com social